The Frozen Continent

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2022. The year we turned 50. Also the year we joined the “Seven Continent Club”

Our trip to Antarctica was aboard Hurtigruten’s MS Roald Amundsen . We loved the boat, our cabin, the crew and the food.

As ours did, many expedition cruises to Antarctica leave from Ushuaia, Argentina, the world's southernmost city. This is a beautiful starting point where you are surrounded by picturesque mountains and a cute quiet little tourist town.

We boarded Hurtigruten’s MS Roald Amundsen in the late afternoon and headed out into the Beagle Channel on our way to our crossing of The Drake Passage. The Beagle channel was beautiful. Snow capped mountains on either side. Lovely. Crossing “The Drake” takes about 2 days. The seas had 5m to 9m swells over the course of our 2 days. Yes….we were treated to the “Drake Shake”. While we were both a little green at times the Gravol helped and we were both able to enjoy the ship's amenities, science lectures, presentations and activities to get us ready for our time in Antarctica.


The thing with expedition cruises is you never actually know where you are going to end up day by day or even hour by hour. Some days we spent roaming, some we climbed into zodiacs and others we went ashore to experience the terrain and wildlife; no matter the day we were always treated to breathtaking landscapes, gigantic floating icebergs and things on this planet we’d never experienced before. On one particular day, after a couple canceled off boat excursions, we found ourselves somewhere we never thought we’d be on this trip. We crossed the Antarctic Circle. This special destination came with a special celebration on board that included an ice water baptism. It was extremely early in the season to travel so far south; we were feeling pretty lucky.


The following day we were able to make our way back north where we anchored in Port Charcot; this location was like something out of a movie. We were surrounded by gigantic mountainous snowy landscapes, and after a short Zodiac ride we were able to hike a hill where we mingled with Gentoo penguins (and we saw a few Chinstrap Penguins too). The hike to the top of the hill was worth the trek, we had a beautiful 360º view that included our postcard-esque view of our ship in the sea, colourful kayaks (from our cruise), snowy mountains, and giant floating icebergs on the waters surrounding us.

After making our way back to the ship we had one more stop and it was here that we had the opportunity to partake in a polar plunge challenge. We both put on our big girl pants (well… actually took them off) and plunged our way into the below freezing (-1º C) waters. The plunge itself wasn’t so bad, the worst part was the challenge of trying to get re-dressed after you're drenched, cold and barefoot in the snow, but we did it and got a certificate to prove it!



Another unexpected highlight was being able to spend some time on an actual ice floe. We took the Zodiac out to a giant piece of floating sea ice where we stepped aboard and trekked across this small temporary island. The crew set up a tea station on the ice for us to warm up as we floated on the ocean; pictures were taken, penguins visited and it turns out we traveled 2.4 nautical miles while we were on it!

Words (and even images) can’t really do Antarctica justice. It truly is something you have to experience and it is a location we would love to go back to again. In between epic landscape and breathtaking views, sea days were busy with lectures, ship tours, video editing and eating.

The ship also had a photographer on board. Not only did he create