Antarctica; Our White Whale…

We know the whales will be black and the ice will look blue, but getting to Antarctica has been our “white whale”, so far, a fruitless effort to get to the 7th continent! We started planning in 2018 to travel Antarctica and South Georgia Island during 2020, after making big changes in our lives in order to travel more. Like Moby Dick, we all know how that story ends! All our travel plans got swallowed up by a global pandemic!

Rescheduled for 2024, we are finally making our last minute preparations to visit this unique and fragile place. (much thanks to our fantastic TA Jay Paul Cruise Planners for organizing our trip) If health, weather and global events allow, we hope to join SilverSea Cloud, an expedition ship that carries just 200 guests as well as naturalist guides, kayaks and inflatable skiffs to explore the Southern Ocean and Antarctic peninsula in the next few days. We have had to make many preparations and learn a lot about how to travel to this remote place in order to take great care of the environment there.

There is a lot of debate about whether people should travel at all to Antarctica, or anywhere really, since it uses and creates more CO2 in the environment. It’s a valid question, and we carefully considered how to travel responsibly to this region. One choice we make is to amortize the international flights we take by staying in the region and live there for several weeks, visiting several places so we won’t need to make multiple trips to the same region. For instance on this trip, we’ll cruise to Antarctica for 2 weeks, stay in Santiago for more than a week and then travel to Patagonia (a unique area that encompasses both Chile and Argentina) for two weeks, As is the case for everyone, reducing emissions becomes a personal choice about priorities and actions to take. We’ll also follow several procedures before we leave and while visiting the continent to protect the environment during our visit. Please follow our Social Media @Goseeittravel if you’d like to follow along with our journey, and enjoy this post about how we prepared for this epic adventure.

Bio Security Procedures

We have received many communications from the cruise about following proper bio security procedures to prevent bringing any pests to the South Georgia Island and the Antarctica peninsula, This involves preparations at home as well as understanding and following procedures on board. In addition to washing all of our outwear before packing it, I also had a lot of gear and boots to put in the bathtub and gave them a good scrub, so there’s no dirt or seeds trapped in the treads! One way to ensure both guest safety and biosecurity is we will be using boots and parkas provided by the cruise line.

Some of the news coming out now, we have learned that we will not be able to put bags or gear on the ground on the Antarctic Peninsula and you cannot kneel or sit on the ground there. There is also an Avian Flu that has been affecting birds on South Georgia Islands and some of the Antarctic Islands, This is affecting passenger landings, and even though it’s not spread by humans, it’s spread by migrating birds, humans still have to be very cautious about not contributing or spreading any illnesses to the wildlife population. There are rules about how close we’ll be able to get to the wild animals we encounter.

Gearing Up

We received a detailed list for packing gear for both of our trips from the outfitters, but we are finding it challenging to pack for this trip! First, we can expect all of the extremes from below freezing, snowing and strong winds on the Antarctic peninsula; temperatures between 40’s and 60’s with high winds in Patagonia and temperatures well above 80 in Santiago! We live in New England, so lucky us, we have clothing and gear to meet ALL of those challenges!

Adding to the challenges of WHAT to pack, has also been the limitations of HOW MUCH to pack! Limits of 50 pounds for our adventure duffle ( our favorite is LL Beans large roller duffle!) 17 pounds for a carry on (which for Jeff is carefully curated camera gear (see below) to capture all the amazing animals and scenery we will be seeing) and a personal item. Even though every airline and trip operator has their own guidelines for weight and size, we have to pack using the guidelines of the operator with lightest and smallest recommendations.

I won’t sugar coat it, we started packing early and have added and subtracted items so many times, finally deciding in the end that we have to pack only things that we know we will use often, better if they do double duty and we’ll be planning to do laundry. After our trip I’ll review my favorite gear and how it held up during our trip.

Preparing Cameras and Binoculars

Jeff is our photographer, he enjoys the challenge of capturing wildlife in it’s native environment. He has worked hard to be very familiar with his gear, so when we are on a trip he’s comfortable with his gear and get the shots he wants, even though he knows he might not get a second chance!

Sony RX100: for shooting in the city or if he wants a readily available camera while traveling. And Kathy will be shooting this camera for video of any exciting animal encounters we have!

Nikon Z9: for its indestructible and long battery life, he is able to have a second camera body available both for redundancy and to keep different lenses on each to avoid changing lenses in challenging weather conditions.

Lenses: 24-120 and 100-400. which he’ll bring out with him every day and bringing a 24-200 as a redundancy (leaving that on the ship unless there’s a catastrophe) and a 600 f/6.3 for shooting birds from the ship or zodiacs.

Guru Gear back pack: which he will shoot our of daily and put inside a dry duffle bag to protect the cameras in the inflatable skiffs we’ll be touring from or using to land on the peninsula.

Black Rabbit Dual strap: to carry both cameras on his person while landing on Antarctica.

Cannon Binoculars and a Vortex chest strap: Kathy will use for viewing and spotting wildlife.

Jeff will review his choices AFTER the trip to let everyone know how his choices worked out in the field! (and we aren’t paid to promote any of the products mentioned in this article, they are items we have bought and used because they work for us!)