You learn many things on a cruise to
Antarctica – how to recognise sea lions,
Kicksokok.com, the difference between Adélie, chinstrap and gentoo penguins, how to vacuum your clothes… “Men are best at it; it causes big problems when they get home,” Tudor said with a mischievous look at a husband and wife team tussling with a hose as I watched my daughter whisk the vacuum over the seams and Velcro of the outdoor garments we planned to wear ashore in Antarctica.
Tudor was one of eight biologists, naturalists, historians and other experts guiding our voyage to the White Continent on a small expedition ship called Fram. The ship was purpose-built a decade ago by Norwegian line Hurtigruten to sail in polar regions: Antarctica in winter and the Arctic in summer.
The vacuuming, which must be done to avoid taking non-native species ashore, is just one of a raft of do’s and don’ts we had to comply with if we wanted to walk with the
penguins in what is one of the coldest, windiest and most awe-inspiring places to which a cruise ship can venture.
What makes it so is not just what you see, which is amazing enough, but also the knowledge that you are visiting the biggest wilderness on earth, 620 miles from civilisation,http://forum.cacaoweb.org/index.php/topic,3718473.msg4728568.html#msg4728568cheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg, with the notorious Drake Passage separating you from the mainland at Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost city.
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The Arctic for beginners
Expedition ship Fram
Ours was a seven-night voyage around the Antarctic Peninsula that began with a night in Buenos Aires before a short flight south to Ushuaia and a brief tour to Tierra del Fuego National Park. By 4pm we were all on board and at 5,
cheap wholesale jordans.30pm Fram set sail down the fjord that links Ushuaia to the Drake.
The three nights we would spend crossing the Drake Passage caused concern for many on my cruise, but in the event we had only one rocky night on the way out and another on the way back. In fact, by the time we got close to land on the return journey, the sea was so calm that the captain sailed west and then swung round to the east so that we could all say we had rounded
Cape Horn.
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Antarctica: in the footsteps of great explorers
Fram lacks the frills you find on modern cruise vessels. There are no balcony cabins for obvious reasons and there is some fairly compact accommodation on the lower decks, with more upmarket rooms and suites higher up. Ours was an outside superior cabin with a large picture window, twin beds (that could be made into a double) and plenty of room for me, my daughter and all the cold-weather gear we needed for our week in Antarctica.
Fram has just one place to eat, with open-seating buffet breakfast,
cheap jordans online, lunch and dinner while in Antarctica, but set dining times and waiter service in the evening while crossing the Drake. Food was good, especially the salads, and you’ll eat well if you like fish. There is also a small coffee bar with self-service hot drinks and cake, and a lecture room.
The most important space on board is the mud room, on the tender deck, where we were called, group by group, to don our boots and life-jackets before getting into one of the small Polarcirkel boats Hurtigruten uses to ferry people ashore, and for excursions.
Under International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) regulations, visitor numbers to the White Continent are tightly controlled. Only ships with fewer than 500 passengers can make landings and just 100 people at a time are allowed ashore, and then only for an hour, which is usually long enough as there are also restrictions on where you can walk. We had 230 passengers, and once we got the hang of the system the landings went very smoothly.
As we crossed the Drake, Karin, our expedition leader, spelt out all the other rules at a mandatory lecture (passengers must attend and sign a paper to go ashore). You must keep a certain distance from wildlife: 16ft from penguins – not always easy as they often come very close – and more for breeding birds and seals. It is forbidden to remove anything – even a pebble. Penguins need them for nest-building.
Boots had to be disinfected before going ashore, and on reboarding, to avoid spreading bacteria, and we had to follow the tracks created by the expedition team because penguins can fall in the footprints. I thought that was a joke until I saw one tumble into someone’s tracks and then struggle to stand back up.
Karin also reminded us all that we were very privileged to be in Antarctica so we should stop taking photos now and then, and reflect on where we were. We were indeed part of a small band of fortunates. Of the 37,400 people who visited Antarctica in the 2013/14 season, which runs from the end of November to the end of February, only 25,526 were on vessels that can take passengers ashore, with most of the rest on sightseeing cruises, spotting penguins from on deck.
Antarctica’s statistics are mind-boggling. The continent is almost 60 times the size of Britain in the austral summer (our winter) and doubles in size when the sea freezes in winter. Floating icebergs are the size of six-storey buildings; the ice can be up to 15,700ft thick and temperatures can fall to below -180F. Yet hundreds of thousands of penguins call it home, as do seals, sea lions, whales and sea birds, plus the krill that keeps so many of the other animals alive.
Krill aside, we saw them all on our cruise – even a pod of killer whales, which, by an extraordinary coincidence, appeared just as Andrew, a biologist member of the expedition team, began a lecture about them. Not surprisingly, he was the first out of the door. By the end of day three we had seen so many penguins, as well as Weddell seals and humpback whales, that expectations rose and killer whales came top of the list instead.
Sea days were filled with lectures about everything from history and geology to penguin-spotting. Once in the peninsula, there was at least one landing a day, taking us to penguin colonies, for hikes up snowy crags and to visit an Argentinian research base in Hope Bay where, in 1978, the first “Antarctica baby” was born.
With the weather on our side we followed the planned itinerary. One day I climbed a hill and snowshoed down the other side. It was one of four optional activities Hurtigruten offers, along with kayaking and two-hour cruises in Polarcirkel boats. Excursions are not cheap – kayaking cost NOK995 (?76); camping NOK2,950 (?236) and snowshoeing a more palatable NOK450 (?35) – but the mixed bag of nationalities on our cruise, which included several British and German passengers, snapped them up.
Huts are preserved at the former British base at Port Lockroy
We also visited the former British base at Port Lockroy – a grand name for what is actually a small rocky islet, now curated by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust. It was fascinating to see the huts preserved as they were in the Forties, with HP Sauce, Quaker Oats and Bovril on pantry shelves, but most passengers were more interested in the shop (the first we had seen since leaving Ushuaia).
Reluctantly, we returned to the ship to hang up our boots for the last time as Fram set a northerly course back to Ushuaia. No sooner had we set sail than we had to turn round to answer a Mayday call from a yachtsman who had fallen ill and was hitching a lift back to civilisation. A reminder, if one were needed, that cruising in Antarctica is not for the faint-hearted.
How to book
Hurtigruten (020 3582 6642;
hurtigruten.co.uk) offers a 13-night Frozen Land of the Penguins round trip from Ushuaia on Fram, departing on November 15, 2016. From ?4,672pp including return flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia. International flights and two nights in Buenos Aires cost from ?1,110pp,http://www.vivasanvivat.ru/news/2015-04-28-solnechnyi-ozhog-ili-zagar-bez-problem.html#comment-58200cheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg,
cheap air jordans, and the Tierra del Fuego tour costs ?111pp.
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The 555-foot (170-meter) marble obelisk, erected in stages during the 1800s and visible for miles around, sustained significant damage when a rare 5.8-magnitude rattled the Mid-Atlantic region in August 2011.
VIPs - including a "patriotic philanthropist" who fronted half the $15 million of restoring the world's highest all-stone structure - came together for a ribbon-cutting ceremony under bright blue skies.
"It's literally a history lesson in marble," said NBC television weather man Al Roker, emcee of the hour-long event where military bands played patriotic music and fourth-grade pupils recounted the monument's story.
Off to the side, several dozen mainly young Americans eagerly lined up to be among the first members of the public in 994 days to ride the elevator up to the observation deck and take in the sweeping views.
"My roommate and I got here at about 1.30 this morning," said Adam Streeter, a George Washington University student, as the sun rose over the National Mall.
"We graduate this coming Sunday and we've never been at the top of the monument, so we figured this was a good time to go up there," he told AFP.
Erected in honor of George Washington, the American Revolutionary War commander and first US president, the monument was closed after engineers found 150 cracks following the August 23, 2011 earthquake.
For months it was sheathed with illuminated steel scaffolding, affording the National Park Service (NPS) a rare opportunity to give the world-famous spire not just a fix-up, but a full overhaul.
"There were cracks inside and outside throughout the entire length of the monument, but especially acute in the pyramidon - that's the top 50 feet of the monument where the walls slope in," said Mike Litterst, a NPS spokesman.
Some 2.7 miles of sealant was injected between the stones, and 53 stainless steel anchors bolted into place at the top to secure the structure in the event of another tremor.
Ringed at its based by 50 American flags, one for each state, the Washington Monument typically attracts more than 800,000 visitors a year - more than the city's population of 632,000.
Half of the $15 million price tag was covered by public funds approved by Congress, and half from local venture capitalist David Rubenstein, whose wealth derives in part from federal defense and intelligence contracts.
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