Day Two — Flight to Ushuaia and Embarkation!

Monday, January 28, dawned sunny and bright in Buenos Aires.  After breakfast in the hotel, we lined up in the lobby to get our boarding passes for the LAN charter flight to Ushuaia, and then boarded buses for the short drive over to Jorge Newbery, BA’s domestic airport.  The Lindblad staff, however, gave MP the wrong boarding pass.  Same last name, different first name.  We noticed the error immediately.  Lindblad reps then went running around looking for the person with MP’s boarding pass, calling out her name in the hotel lobby and on the waiting buses, but could not find her.  They told us to get on a bus anyway, and said they would sort this out at the airport.  We boarded a bus but, as you can imagine, the mixup caused us a good bit of distress — in the United States, MP would be denied boarding without the correct boarding pass.  Would our trip end here?   Finally, just as our bus was about to depart, one of the Nat Geo naturalists came running onto the bus with the correct boarding pass.  Whew.

We got to the airport, went through security, and then down to our gate, where we waited, and waited, and waited.  At some point, an announcement was made that our flight would be delayed.  No one from LAN told us why or for how long; in fact, there was no one from LAN even around.  The Nat Geo folks had no more information than we did, nor were they able to find out anything.  (Hello, you guys chartered the plane!)  As we sat there in the airport, it was obvious that our time in Ushuaia was going to be cut short, and that we likely weren’t going to have a chance to see Tierra del Fuego National Park as scheduled, which would be a shame.   Finally, more than an hour after we’d been scheduled to depart, we were told the plane was ready for boarding.

And, guess what?! After all the grief that Lindblad had put us through over weight limits for our carry on bags on the charter, NO ONE weighed anything.  In fact, there wasn’t even a scale in sight.  (It struck me that since Lindblad was chartering the plane, perhaps something better could have been worked out over the carry ons that would have spared folks all that needless worry.)

One final complaint about the arrangements.  MP is pretty tall, and when I booked the trip, I made a point of telling the Lindblad rep that MP needed an aisle seat on the charter flights and why.  We had booked so far in advance, I could not imagine this would be a problem.  But apparently it was.  MP and I were given a middle seat and a window seat, on a 3 by 3 plane.  Fortunately, a kind flight attendant immediately saw that this was going to be a huge problem for MP, and told her that as soon as everyone was seated, she could move to the exit row.  Thank you, LAN flight attendant!  No thank you, Lindblad!

The flight itself was (thankfully) uneventful, mostly over water.  But as we neared Ushuaia, we turned inland over the Andes, flying pretty close to some major mountains.  It was definitely one of the most beautiful and dramatic airport approaches I’ve ever encountered.

From the airport, we were whisked by bus to the docks (sadly, as I’d feared, no time for the drive through the National Park).  It was a quick ride, allowing only for a few glimpses of Ushuaia and photos through the windows.

At the dock, we board a catamaran, the Ushuaia Explorer, for a lunchtime cruise in the Beagle Channel.  This was an extraordinary experience, a truly great kickoff to our expedition.  Not long after leaving the pier, we were seeing cormorants, also known as shags, dotting the rocky islands in the Channel; from a distance, they almost looked like penguins.

But unlike penguins, shags can fly.  BIF!!

It was windy out, it was cold, there were birds everywhere, it was WONDERFUL!!!  Finally, the trip was beginning!!  I was so excited I pretty much abandoned my lunch on the table inside so I could be out on deck, taking it all in, and, of course, taking pictures.   It was only lunchtime, and we’d already seen so many kinds of birds we had never seen before.

It just kept getting better and better; we even saw a South American brown sea lion, sleeping peacefully on a rock:

I wasn’t the only one who thought being on deck was better than eating lunch.

All too soon, though, it was time to return to the dock.  As we neared land, we got a good glimpse of the National Geographic Explorer, soon to be our home away from home.

After docking, we walked across the pier and boarded the Explorer.  Is this really happening, I thought?  After all this time and planning . . . I can’t even begin to describe how excited MP and I were.

As we boarded, we were greeted by the staff and crew.  We then went down to our cabin, a Category 2 on the main deck.  It was perfectly fine.  A comfortable bed, plenty of storage space, a nicer and larger bathroom than we’d been expecting, and a huge window.  We were in a great location near the stairs to the Mud Room, which turned out to mean less time standing around fully dressed for the landings and zodiac cruises.

Speaking of the outdoors, our “complimentary” parkas were waiting on the bed.  Oh no — mine was NOT the size I had ordered — it was the wrong size, totally too small!!  OH NO!!  Readers of this blog may recall how much I had agonized over the parka, given my “hard to fit” body when it comes to unisex (read “male”) sizing.  Although I knew that there would be a parka swap party that evening for folks whose parkas didn’t fit, I had no idea whether they would have any extras of the special size for short women that I’d ordered.  PANIC.  I ran up to the reception desk, where I was assured there were several of the size I’d ordered on board (but I still couldn’t have one yet).  This was a terrible way to start the expedition.  (How hard is it, really, to go down a list and put the correct parkas in a cabin?  Maybe as hard as it is to go down a list and give someone the correct boarding pass, or the seat they’d asked for on a plane more than a year in advance.  I regret having to say this, but Lindblad’s handling of administrative matters left a great deal to be desired.  Fortunately, this was not the case in terms of the expedition itself and, as my future posts will underscore, the expedition was phenomenal.)

That first evening on board was a whirlwind.  We had the mandatory muster drill, first meeting up in the lounge with our life vests on before heading outside to the lifeboats. The vests themselves are not the kind you find on cruise ships; these were flotation devices that did not inflate unless and until they were exposed to water.  This way, they could be worn over our parkas when we were on the zodiacs. (Once ashore, we would toss them in a bin and then pick up another before we re-boarded the zodiacs.)

As there would be every evening, there was a gathering of the entire group in the main lounge for our “daily briefing” prior to dinner.  On this first night, we heard from our intrepid expedition leader, Bud Lehnhausen, and got to meet all of the expedition staff as well as the ship’s Captain, veteran Antarctic master and delightful raconteur Oliver Kruess.

We even had the good fortune to see a rainbow at sailaway.

We had our first dinner on board, and at some point along the way there was the famous “parka exchange party,” where I finally got the size parka I’d ordered.  It fit perfectly.   Whew!  Thank you again, Ship to Shore Traveler for all the help and advice on the sizing!

We were now heading across the Drake Passage.  THE DRAKE PASSAGE!!!  Bud had already told us it was going to be a pretty rough crossing, as we had large, following seas, with some waves up to 30 feet.  Underscoring Bud’s words, today’s “Daily Program” — the printed schedule left in the cabin each day — advised those “bothered by ocean motion” to “please take precautionary medications soon after dinner.”  It also said to “please check in your cabin that valuable and fragile items such as cameras, binoculars, and laptop computers are put away so that during the night they will not slide or fall off a desk or table.”

The warnings were appropriate — the ship was rockin’ and rollin’ all night. .  . Just your typical crossing of the Drake!

I got very little sleep that night –I’m not bothered by rough seas, although we were being tossed around quite a bit, and that would have made sleeping difficult under any circumstances — but I was so excited it was just overwhelming.  It was very much like the first night I spent many years ago at the bottom of the Grand Canyon — it’s a very special place, you plan your trip for a long time, and when it finally happens, you can’t believe you are really there.

Pinch me, we are crossing the Drake Passage!

(photos by turtles06)