MuseumChick | Danee Gilmartin

The other day my group of girlfriends told me how much they like my good friend, Gil Elliot and also mentioned how much he talks. I thought this was strange since I usually describe him as quiet and introverted. Then it hit me- I talk so much that he never gets a chance. So I want to give him a chance now. I asked him to write a guest post on a place that most people haven’t been. There aren’t museums, artifacts or even a restaurant but it’s still too interesting not to share with you. We go most places together now, but before we were married he took the trip of a life time- to Antarctica. With the small ship + arctic waters= I’m too scared to go, so I’ll have to live vicariously through these pictures and story.

Written by my good friend,  Gil Elliot -

Our trip began with a couple of days in Buenos Aires followed by a flight down to Ushuaia (in the Tierra del Fuego). We were late due to our flight, so we got taken directly to our vessel, the MS Andrea. Never being on any sort of cruise, I was relieved to find out that we would be traveling on such a large, sturdy vessel, capable of carrying up to 150 passengers and crew. I later learned from my wife that this is actually minuscule compared to even the smallest cruise ships, sort of equivalent to riding a garbage can down I-95. In a moment of ominous foreshadowing, we were informed during our welcoming briefing that there was a large stock of Dramamine on board for the trip south.

One of the interesting things about the Drake Passage (which is the space lying between Argentina and Antarctica) is that it’s the narrowest point where the waters of the Pacific Ocean merge with the waters of the Atlantic. I did not understand the significance of this until we were underway, and spent the next two days in rough seas. I don’t remember much as I was in a Dramamine induced haze, though I recall 30′ waves, the ship rolling up to 20 degrees from side to side (so, if you looked out your window you would see nothing but sky… count to 4…. then you would see nothing but water….for two days).

Finally we arrived at Deception Island, an old whaling base.

Since this used to be a whaling base, these large tanks were for holding whale oil. The island is volcanic, hence the black sands.

I’ve always been interested in airplanes (particularly military planes), so I was intrigued by this pile of dinosaur bones. Not sure what the story is behind this plane, but it was leftover from some sort of British base that was destroyed by a volcano in the 60s or 70s. I think it’s a DeHaviland but ff anyone recognizes this, would someone please let me know in the comments below?

Before embarking, the trip leader told us that anyone who swam in the ocean here would get a free bottle of champagne when we were back up on the boat. I could not pass up this opportunity for free booze, plus how cool would it be to say that you swam in the Antarctic Ocean? Just I and one other member of our trip had the brains to take the trip leader up on this offer, and this is us right before we jumped in, sitting on the hot sand (the sand actually was very hot once you dug down a few inches- almost painfully hot due to the volcanic activity).

Jumping in the 40 degree (Fahrenheit) water felt like getting poked with a thousand needles while being electrocuted. Then as it turned out, we got a bottle of sparkling white wine instead of champagne. In fairness, the two of us just sort of flopped around and gasped- there wasn’t much swimming going on.

Here’s one of the inhabitants of the island- I think this was a Weddell Seal or a Crabeater Seal. The animals there have almost no fear of people. My camera had virtually no zoom on it, so in order to get this picture (and my others) I had to be basically right next to the animals. He was passed out on the sand pretty much the entire time we were there. I think he moved once- it’s a hard life to be a seal in Antarctica.

On our next quick stop, I found this juvenile seal (a guide told me it was a very young Elephant Seal) and a penguin colony. Funny story about the penguins- when we were at our first stop, there was a single Chinstrap Penguin and a seal. This was the first penguin any of us had seen on the trip, so all of us took a million photos of him. Little did we know we would see hundreds of penguins throughout our journey.

This is a colony of Gentoo Penguins (shout out to all of my wife’s Linux-running readers).

To be continued…

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