The next day in Antarctica – still buzzing from having sailed not just to Antarctica but far south into the Antarctica circle – a feat no other sailing all season had done – we got up super early and super excited, and super eager to explore even more of the frozen continent.
Also, since we had done the Drake Passage crossing, this meant that we could stop taking our sea sickness tablets.
To be honest, I don’t think we really needed them as much as we were lucky to have the Drake Lake – which is when the Drake Passage is all nice and calm.
As a quick reminder, the Drake Passage is the most powerful sea convergence and the most treacherous sea voyage in the world.
It’s the one that has 12m / 40ft high waves which makes sense when you realise that this is where the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and the Southern Ocean all meet.
When it’s calm, it’s called the Drake Lake and when it’s rough and stormy, it’s called the Drake Shake.
We took our time with breakfast, which has now actually become one of my favourite things to do. I love a long lazy breakfast.
It’s just so calming and wakes you up properly.
Anyway, after breakfast, we grabbed our cameras and headed to the deck above the ship.
The weather is such a strange thing in Antarctica – one minute it’s all nice and calm and the next minute you’re in stormy winds.
Then it switches up again at a moment’s notice and you’re back in the calmest weather imaginable.
The Lemaire Channel had arguably the strongest winds we’d experienced all sailing. It isn’t typically like that. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
The waters here are sheltered so it’s usually like a lake.
It was still pretty impressive though. Especially those huge mountains!
When you think of Antarctica, or at least when we did, we typically would think of huge stretches of flat ice and not ginormous mountains so it was a bit mind-boggling taking it all in.
Fun fact, these mountains were actually part of the Andes back when Antarctica was still connected to South America, ergo why they’re called the Antarctandes.
After the Lemaire Channel, we went over to Neko Harbour, which was when the wind just disappeared and the water just went all calm. It was absolutely incredible.
Suddenly we started to spot lots of different wildlife all around us.
Seals on the ice, penguins bobbing in…
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