This Is Who We Are And This Is What We Do

Voyage #1 – November 11 through November 21

Antarctica is heart-breakingly beautiful. The glaciers here are magnificently colossal. They unfurl from between mountain peaks and spill out into the ocean - mountains are utterly buried in them in fact…and they are always shifting, always calving icebergs - when on land it is not uncommon to hear the low thunderous roar of an avalanche somewhere in the distance.

Passing icebergs commonly rival the ship in stature, each one wildly different than the next in its architectural design. Sometimes I’ll glance out my little bar window and be momentarily stunned by a house-sized powder blue sparkling monolithic castle slowly floating directly next to the boat. In the words of our expedition leader, “There are icebergs, and then there are icebergs.”

On a sunny day with no wind, the sea reflects the sky and mountains with a perfect fidelity, and small ice chunks dot the water like constellations. These days are the most beautiful. The only colours are blues and greys and brilliant whites, that is, until the sun sets and the world becomes a fiery mélange of oranges, purples, reds, and yellows - All of this is the view from my office.

And then there are penguins: They’re everywhere – either crowding together on hilltops or waddling around randomly, their entire body weight shifting from one side to another with every step they take, their stubby little wings outstretched for balance. Sometimes when attempting to make a particularly large jump from one rock to another they will fall and land on their fat little football bodies with a thud, roll themselves back upright and continue to waddle to their intended destination. When in the sea, they move with a surprising agility, like corpulent little torpedoes, every once and awhile cresting the surface of the water to perform a dive a la dolphin. I could watch these creatures toddle to and fro for hours.

Indeed, Antarctica is yet another region of the world that has stolen my heart. Those who pay to get here must travel for days to step foot on a tiny portion of the seventh continent. Out of the five days we spend cruising along the Antarctic Peninsula, we make merely one landing on Antarctica proper as opposed to tiny islands that dot the harbours, bays, and coves that make up the coast, a testament to the forbidding nature of this most southerly chunk of land.

But let me back up a bit. We are actually quite fortunate to be sailing right now, on schedule. Our departure on the intended date of November 11th depended on three things: the ship passing port inspection, where the main concern was customs and immigration, (the Lyubov Orlova was docked in Ushuaia for 60 days last year because she didn’t pass this gauntlet) the ship passing an independent safety inspection, and, of course, our ability to unpack, load and set up the ship before the arrival of our first group of passengers. But we did it. We passed both inspections and managed to do a week’s worth of work in 30 hours, with barely enough time to shower and make ourselves presentable for our first group, wearing smiles that did not betray our complete and utter exhaustion. Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure how convincing mine was at times. This cruise has been a test of my every patience – I’ve had to simultaneously get settled in my new working environment, which has meant making due with surprise inconveniences such as a broken ice machine, bar floods, brown drinking water, and an inoperable dish washer, scavenging for clean scraps of towel that I can use to keep my bar respectably clean, using a screwdriver like a Neanderthal to break down iceberg bits into usable pieces, (I did not come out of this task unscathed) and searching for stray bottles of essential liquors that had been buried in the hold, all the while pretending a) that I knew what I was doing and b) that it would be my pleasure to cater to the sometimes-crazy requests of my guests. But I’m acclimatizing, I’m finding lost items, I’m developing more efficient ways of chopping ice, and I’m channeling MacGuyver as I think of ways to make my bar work for me and the 112 passengers on the ship. But there are the perks as well… spontaneous passenger-conga lines that lead out of the dining room after dinner, where, “We’ve been to Antarctica! We’ve been to Antarctica! We’ve been to Antarctica!” is sung, the fact that all I have to do is step out on deck and voila: Solitude that consists of just the sea and I, the fact that my ship rocks me to sleep every night (sleeping in a ship gives a girl crazy dreams, I can tell you that.) These things, my dear reader, are pretty damn great. And hell, at least I don’t get seasick.

Today we’re heading north on the Drake Passage and once again the ship is pitching and rolling and creaking and crashing around in the sea like a toy boat. We’re sailing through fog. Every five minutes or so our ship is belching out the plaintive honk of the foghorn.

We are returning to Ushuaia to drop off this first batch of passengers and pick up batch number two. We will say our good-byes, re-provision the ship, scatter to make the most of two or three hours in town to buy essentials and do whatever else we need to do, then come back by 3PM in order to greet the second round of guests and do it all over again. Giddy-up!