What follows are a bunch of photos and videos, most of them with brief little captions to help the tale along.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Sunrise over the Andes Mountains as I fly toward’s Buenos Aires
Why would I start this with a menu? The very first thing I did in Buenos Aires was make my way to a dinner reservation I had made a few months prior. A reservation in which I had to tell the chef about myself and pass a vibe check before they would even approve it and give me the address of the restaurant. That's because the restaurant is actually the private home of the award winning chef. Was I there alone? Nope, I sat at the chef’s dining table along with 10 other strangers who also booked that evening. The chef worked the kitchen while his partner, an anthropologist and folklore dance instructor, hosted the event. Over the course of the next few hours all of us strangers at the table slowly became friends. Casa Saltshaker is one of a handful of underground hidden private restaurants in Buenos Aires, known locally as “las puertas cerradas” - the closed doors.
First day, graffiti tour. Graffiti is legal in Argentina and these expressions can be found all over the place.
The mural on the right was done with a charcoal based paint
Eh, its still art
Some tags in a school playground. The white bonnets at the top of the building are very significant - they represent los desaparecidos, the disappeared. In the 70s and 80s, while the country was under dictatorship, military officials would steal and often execute the babies of alleged political dissidents. In 1977, the mothers of these lost children started meeting in the Plaza del Mayo demanding answers. The mothers continue to meet and march on the square to this day, every Thursday at 3:30pm
The graffiti tour ended in a bar owned by graffiti artists. I saw this stencil work and it haunted my mind for the following two weeks. When I returned to Buenos Aires on the tail end of the trip, I went straight to this bar and purchased the painting in a situation that was straight out of a movie and the story of getting this painting back home is equally wild.
Just look at this dang tree!
Recoleta cemetery, a stunning graveyard filled with notable people including Eva Peron
This young woman was had been at university in Switzerland and died in an avalanche
Her portrait above the stairs down to her tomb. Really love the style
Headed home at 2am when you were only going out for “one drink”
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego
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This is where I stayed, the home of my amazing host and her dog Pancha. She and her late husband moved here 40 years ago and built this house themselves.
My host welcomed me in and we shared a homemade lunch and some yerba mate. She radiated her kind spirits and good intention, but didn’t speak a word of English. We chatted away anyway, relying on my rough construction site Spanish and Google Translate
Pancha leading the way into the forest on a hike to the mountain top. After my host introduced me to her son, she suggested we take the dog and hike up to a glacial lake
Seriously suspicious spot
Waterfalls
Waterfalls everywhere
Higher up on the trail, these trees persevered against winters of heavy snow
My host’s son
Out of the woods
Look how far we have come
La Pancha - She was an incredible ol’ dog. In her senior years, she eagerly joined in on this hike and led the way (all the way, both ways) with energy and excitement. Here she is 5 miles from where we started and nearly 3,000ft higher.
Nearly there.
Once upon a time, a mighty glacier was here sat. Laguna Margot, Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego.
Looking back along the path of what once was a glacier
This southern stretch of the Andes offers a most spectacular selection of mosses
Mas mosses espectacular
Looking out over Ushaia and the Beagle Channel
The dark forest beckons as we begin the journey back down. It’s 8pm, and fairly bright
9pm and the spookiness factor has steadily increased, an eerie brightness lingers in the sky
Ushuaia, Argentina. The mountains in the distance are actually across the border in Chile.
Graffiti is prevalent even here
And equally incredible
Homestead, and in the background is Monte Olivia at an elevation of nearly 4,000ft
Met up with two friends I’d made the evening prior and we began a hike along a trail down the coast toward an old house
Breathtaking forest
Absolutely breathtaking
The Beagle Channel looking, Ushuaia in the distance on the right and Chile on the left
The old farmstead
With a notable outhouse
Friend
Moo friends
Walking back up towards the house in Ushuaia
Involved a lot of stairs
Finally made it to the house, looking back down from top of the last set of stairs. If you look closely, you can see there’s another flight beyond the end in the photo
Ship
My ship, the MV Ushuaia. Built in 1976 and originally used as a NOAA research vessel, as well as a clandestine spy ship tasked with keeping an eye on Cuba, it was eventually converted for passenger use. A very small ship, it holds 88 passengers and 40 crew.
Expedition to Antarctica
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At the start of our voyage, the red arrow showing the path of our two day crossing of the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula. The Drake Passage is known for being a fairly horrendous stretch of ocean and the we were dipping in as a significant storm made its way past.
Storm. This was one of my two room mates. He and his wife (Americans) were traveling to every continent. She was in a different room, however. Our other roommate was a French guy who worked in high-speed rail
While we are on the subject, lets take a trip down to the room. The seas were so rough, there were times where walking down the stairs was like walking across level ground. As the ship was also moving vertically, sometimes the floor would just come charging up at you. Because of this, there was a strict two hands on the rail safety policy. Injuries due to rough seas were a frequent occurrence. Someone on a cruise prior to us suffered an open fracture from being thrown down the stairs, and a woman on my boat had her finger tips cut off by a slamming door. It was for this reason that I was required to purchase a half-million dollar “emergency evacuation and expatriation insurance policy” as any injury that couldn't be treated by the onboard doctor would require that the passenger be removed from the ship - usually with assistance from the Argentine Navy - and then getting treatment before being returned to their home country.
The storm continued through the night
In the room, facing two beds with a third behind me. Safety rails on the bed to keep you from getting thrown onto the floor in the night, though they recommended stuffing your clothes and bag under the mattress as well to keep yourself pinned against the wall. Not pictured is the en-suite bathroom, which had the unique requirement that no toilet paper was allowed to be flushed due to the frail plumbing system and the rough seas. Instead, all tp was to be put in the trash can… all of it. Not the typical accommodations you'd expect for a ticket that cost $5,500.
Early morning after the storm, sneak attack.
A crew member let me know that the previous night we had encountered gale force winds nearing 60mph and waves up to 15 meters / 50 feet, or about the height of the ship.
As you watch the waves form, keep in mind this was taken from the main lounge, maybe 40ft above the water. When the sky fills your view, you’ll be able to see how the ship twists across the top of the wave, changing direction completely.
There is an immense amount of energy moving around out here. The Southern Ocean has the strongest currents in the world as it is able to circulate freely around the bottom of the earth. With no land in its path, the water just pushes eastward, around and around. Where the tip of South America and the top of the Antarctic Peninsula reach toward one another, all this energy is funneled between the two - the Drake Passage
Open bridge policy
How do you know when you’ve moved from the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific into the actual Southern Ocean? Where do they meet? Well, theres actually a super interesting answer. Even though the edge of the Southern Ocean doesn’t really sit still, you’ll know you’ve made it when the temperature of the water suddenly drops by about 5 degrees.
After two days of sailing, we approach the South Shetland Islands just off the Antarctic coast
Disembarking on Half Moon Island. Under the Antarctic Treaty, only vessels with less than 500 people aboard are allowed to make landings in Antarctica, and even then there is a limit of only 100 people ashore at any given time.
Something something not in Kansas anymore…
Not alone, either…
Chinstrap penguin
Many a chinstrap penguin
The small buildings in the distance are Base Camara, an Argentine research station, although it was unoccupied at the time
Note the old wooden whaling boat partially buried in the snow halfway up the picture on the right, abandoned over a century ago
Example of a daily schedule on the ship
Penguins on Hydrurga Rocks, view of Continental Antarctica in the distance
Antarctica
Antarctica
Two seals on an iceberg
This video is loud
No seals on an iceberg
Antarctica
Shhhh just take this one in
Yep
Checks out
Paradise Bay
Yours truly
Preparing a feast
Paradise Bay, Antarctica
Leaving the ship
Edge of a glacier
Edge of a glacier
Another one for which words fail
…
Approaching Base Brown on continental Antarctica
Paradise Bay and Argentine Base Brown
Yours truly and the aforementioned
Seen from the ship, a baby killer whale. The whole pod was out, the parents teaching the kids how to hunt
Taken at midnight on the dot
Another landing, emphasis on penguins
Heavy emphasis on penguins
Penguin feathers are incredibly dense and insulating. When they get too hot, they seek relief by lifting their wings, the little patches of skin under their wings flushed and radiating that heat but not nearly fast enough. As ambient temperatures rise and the snowfall patterns change, it is easy to see that they are struggling.
A quick look around the Gentoo Penguin colony on Cuverville Island
More friends
Showing off
This briefing was serious and somber. The storm that was brewing was far more intense than the one we sailed through on the way down, as illustrated by the general chaos on the screen and totally new colors on the gradient. We were informed that the decision had been made to leave Antarctica a day and a half early, we would be sailing out that evening. On the forecast map, you’ll see a red dot and a yellow dot. The red dot is where we would be hit by the storm if we stayed the extra time, the yellow is how much closer to safety we would be if we left that day. The crew were visibly stressed, and it was the captain himself who came out and spoke to us - a first. After this briefing, I bought 10 minutes of time on their satellite internet connection - my first contact with the outside world in two weeks - and sent an email to my family letting them know how great of a time I’d had and that I loved them. Knowing how old and rickety the ship was, and how it had been thrashed about in the first storm - groaning and creaking and shuddering the entire time - I had a brief existential crisis at the newly recalculated odds of me making it home alive. It was a really significant moment and catalyzed some changes in how I’ve been living my life since.
In 2022, at the same point in the season almost to the day, a ship returning across the Drake through a storm was hit by a rogue wave which crashed through a row of windows on one of the passenger decks, killing 1 and injuring 4 others. It was hit by two successive waves, the first was 40ft high, and the second was between 70-80ft high. It was a brand new vessel, the Viking Polaris, and it is the biggest ship that operates in the Antarctic. Ships are measured by their volume in Gross Tonnage, and the Viking Polaris is more than 30,000 Gross Tonnes - carrying 640 people. My ship, the MV Ushuaia, on the other hand, carries a small gathering of 128 people and is only 2,900 Gross Tonnes - oh and it’s a 40 something year old rust bucket. If we’d been hit by a 70 foot wave, I’d have been wishing I’d brought my floaties.
Our approach to Deception Island, one final stop on the way out of Antarctica as the weather was clearly coming in.
Deception Island is really the top of an active volcano, the rim of a caldera exposed above the water, with one small opening allowing us to make our way into the basin.
This opening, with steep cliffs on both sides, is called Neptunes Bellows
In the flooded caldera are the ruins of an old Norwegian whaling station from the early 1900s
Does this mean I’m inside or outside?
35 people are buried here, and there’s a memorial to another 10 who were lost at sea
Screenshot from actual footage of me running out of the freezing waters of the southern ocean in the middle of this volcano caldera in nothing but my boxer briefs. Stripped down on the beach, ran in till about thigh high, and then plunged entirely underwater. Thats me on the left with the bun :) It was an exhilarating experience for sure. The water temperature at the time was -29 degrees Fahrenheit. The lava rock beach itself was actually relatively warm, on account of the active volcano below it.
The way back was indeed rough, for the worst parts we were to remain in our cabins and the bridge definitely wasn’t open
Made better by the playful dolphins that danced around the bow of our ship as we got closer to South America
Ushuaia Once Again
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Back in Ushuaia
Looking back out over the Beagle Channel
Hiked up to see what’s left of Martial Glacier
Back in Buenos Aires
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Spent a few more days in Buenos Aires. Here you can see the purple blossoms of Jacaranda trees, which are also prolific where I grew up. We had one in our backyard even.
Sampled the tasty treats
Made some local friends and got to enjoy some hidden gems
Words can’t touch the deliciousness
