Two weeks through Antarctica
 

I spent the last 2 weeks of 2015 on the ship, MS Expedition, touring around the Antarctic peninsula. I spent about a third of the trip on the east side of the peninsula, on the Weddell Sea, and the remainder on the west side of the peninsula, going as far as 63 degrees south. For the most part the weather was not terribly harsh. It was typically in the 30s during the day, and teens-20s overnight. Some days were cloudy or foggy, but we had a number of days with clear skies and brilliant sunshine. There were just two partial days were it snowed a lot (which were quite pretty, especially considering how I live in a part of California that just about never gets snow).

Since this is flyertalk, I'll comment a bit about the logistics of how I got to/from the end of the world. I live in the Bay Area of California (US), so it was quite a long distance of flying. I don't have status with any airline, and sadly that meant I was stuck in economy on US domestic airlines for much of the trip. I flew American SFO to MIA on a 738. Then caught a codeshare on LAN to EZE (Buenos Aires) on a 772. Next I needed to take a taxi clear across the city to AEP to catch an Aerolinas Argentinas flight on a 738 to USH (Ushuaia), at the very southern tip of South America. The American flight was absolutely miserable. The guy in the seat in front of me decided that the space under his seat was for his stuff, rather than my feet, and then paged the FA claiming that I was kicking his seat. Without even listening to my side of the story, the FA took his side, and threatened to have me kicked off the flight. Anyway, the LAN & AeroArg flights were actually not too bad, although the approach to USH was ridiculous. I'm not sure if the pilot was incompetent, or if the weather conditions were unusual, or if its simply a challenging approach, but we kept abruptly dropping several hundred feet at a time, with sharp mountains not far below us. We boarded the ship in Ushuaia the rest of the way to Antarctica. The flight home was USH to EZE on Aerolinas Argentinas (this time it was an A321). Then a painfully long American flight from EZE to DFW on a 772 with a sadistic 2-5-2 seating config, where we were stuck in the middle 3 seats for the 10.5 hour flight. Finally, we flew a 738 from DFW back to SFO.

But enough rambling on, I'll let the photos show off this amazing place.

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Neko Harbor

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Crabeater Seal

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Tabular icebergs offshore, penguin colony on Gourdin Island

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Mikkelsen Bay

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Lemaire Channel

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Adelie penguins

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Humpback whales feeding

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What's left of the largest chunk of the B15 iceberg. Google "b15 iceberg" for much more info on this record setting iceberg.

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Chinstrap penguin

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Deception Island

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Iceberg with natural caves

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Elephant Seal at Turret Point

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Adrift

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Elephant Point (South Shetland Islands)

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Sea Ice for the next thousand miles at the north Weddell Sea

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Historic whaling station on Deception Island

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Brash ice in Neko Harbour

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Passing the locals off the South Shetland Islands

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Devil Island

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Brown Station, an Argentine research base on Paradise Harbour


The rest of the album is posted here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/netlla...7700546/page1/

Did you like the boat?

Seems more reasonably priced compared to the super luxury ones.

Flying on an US carrier is unpleasant.

However apparently Aerolines Argentinas to the USA is also bad; even in C.

Great pictures!

Do you have any pictures from the ship?

That´s definitively an experience I have to do! Thanks for sharing^

A trip I love to go on. Beautiful pictures. Thanks for sharing.

I heard that Russian expedition ships are great.

Yes, the boat was ok. Definitely not luxury, but that's not what we were seeking. Food was solidly ok. Beds were comfortable enough.

Interesting. I heard the opposite. Mostly that the Russian ships focus on luxury, and tend to flaunt the rules/laws often just to please their wealthy clients. Was there any specific expedition that you heard about?

I have a few, but its nothing fancy, although not spartan either. The official photos ( https://www.gadventures.com/travel-s...-cruises/ship/ ) are accurate, although I was in a triple room.

OP any ship pics? Cabins? Commn areas? Pics? How do you value the experience to the $$ for the ship? Thx

I have a few pictures of the ship here:
http://netllama.linux-sxs.org/pix/tr...ca/index2.html

Awesome TR! It's certainly added to the bucket list!

Thanks for sharing the pictures

Great pictures. Thank you so much for sharing.

Awesome Photos!

Great pictures!!!

Regarding the unusual descending at USH, is very common on both airlines (AR or LA) for that airport, I think it's the only way to do it.