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posted by Vacation Home Rentals on Jul 23

Two nautical charts are on the ship’s navigation table. Both charts show these waters have yet to be surveyed. Our captain maintains a safe course using depth soundings. This is a new channel, one he’s never sailed; although he’s safely traveled the Antarctic innumerable times before. To get a closer look on antarctica cruise deals visit this site.

Dusk sets in and reduces visibility.  Then is starts to snow in earnest. The windows on the bridge are soon covered in flakes, obscuring the floating barriers that fill the channel. The ship’s radar clearly illustrates each floating barrier. We can see large spots of orange, indicating icebergs, on the screen. Ahead, we can see a super-sized orange glob, filling the screen. We are three kilometers from it.

At one kilometer, the silence breaks with a whispered command from the captain. With a flick of the wheel, the helmsman steers the ship away from the danger. We glimpse a tabular iceberg through the shroud of fog and snow.  This is a unique form of iceberg that can only be seen in the southern ocean. Sporting straight sides that rise rapidly into the air, this berg is over one hundred feet tall.  The top is very flat and very wide.

The sheer magnitude of Antarctica has dumbfounded me again. On our journey to the bottom of the globe, we’re cruising in a polar-class vessel. We will pass the planet’s harshest, least lived-upon areas as we go. Though Antarctica was officially found in 1820, no one wintered over on the land until 79 years later. Explorers wanted to find the southern pole, and soon perished.  They paved the way for scientists. You used to have to be rich to travel to Antarctica. Now, for about the same cost as going to the Caribbean, you can visit the seventh continent. You will gain a deeper understanding about exciting antarctica cruises by checking out that resource.

Antarctica looks a little bit like a manta ray with a curved tail. The manta ray’s tail extends to within 500 miles of South America. This is known as Drake Passage.  It is home to the roughest seas on the planet. It has also been called the ‘Slobbering Jaws of Hell’ and extracts a high price for passage. One of the passengers told us all to stow everything and secure the latches on the cabin portholes before they went to bed.

We set sail from the Argentina city of Ushuaia and traveled through the calm waters of the Beagle Channel.  Then we moved into the open oceans. We spent two days on very rough seas with no land in sight. Near gale-force winds were our constant companion. Passing my fourth deck window, ocean spray shot into the air from waves breaking on the bow. Swells could be seen in the range of fifteen to forty feet; size varied according to the observer’s level of seasickness.

Two days out from South America, we reached the Southern Ocean. One of my first views was of a coastal archipelago. Due to the land, the water seemed to have quieted. Clouds dressed mile-high mountain peaks. Smooth and silky, the glaciers appeared to have been pierced through with the angular mountains and outcroppings. Frozen slab ice entered the water.  It was rough and bumpy, cracked and dirty. Looking like the range in which you’d find Everest, it sticks straight up out of the water.

One passenger thought that childbirth’s labor was similar to our efforts to reach Antarctica. This continent seems to behave as a bad child would.  It’s the coldest, driest, windiest, and highest continent on earth. Antarctica’s polar plateau gets the same amount of precipitation as Death Valley, but the continent holds 70 percent of all the freshwater we have on earth. No animal makes Antarctica its year-round home, nor is it owned by humans.  It doesn’t even have a primordial human population.

In this rough environment, shore landings, as well as sailing routes, all depend on the weather. Our guides have advised us that we’ll need to be flexible, but our initial shore landing comes as scheduled. Those groups to which we’ve been assigned meet on deck. My ten member group climbs into an inflatable boat. We only have one more quarter mile of water to cross before we reach the land. And with that last step, I join a small number of people who have actually stood on the Antarctic Continent.

posted by Vacation Home Rentals on Jul 16

After stepping down the cruise liner’s gangway with care, I waited to make my move, looking for a break in the waves. Taking one fast stride, I was seated in my rubber boat. Our team of tourists went bouncing by huge fragments of strikingly blue ice and even a seal dozing off, right after a few minutes. I swing my legs over the zodiac to get to the Antarctic Peninsula’s northern tip as soon as the boat reaches a rocky beach. You can get the best antarctica cruises information by visiting this website.

As I walked along blocks of ice in the shore, my nose is struck by a stinging guano smell and a remarkable sight. Around where I stood, adorable adelie penguins waddled. Up a craggy slope their numbers rose, right as far as I can behold. This is a momentous day as we finally land in the farthest of all continents and this two day cruise from Ushuaia, Argentina is simply rewarding even as it had to course through the unknown perils of the rough seas. Many tourists all over the world are now being captivated by this crystalline kingdom located at the end of the Earth and make them realize it is worth going to.

Around 26,000 were the number of guests last year and the number of visitors grow each year. Patterns of swirling blue are broken by lectures on global sneaky penguins. The weather is extremely pleasant during the Decembers of the austral summer even as this continent is known to be the world’s coldest. Going way beyond 40s in the area of the peninsula, temperatures can reach beyond freezing. Trips are expected to run from November to March.

This ship, 100 meters long goes on an 11 day cruise with its tough exterior and is always almost full, capable of welcoming around a hundred passengers on board. Even as the ship is not fancy, it gives people utmost comfort. It features the comforts of a bar, lounge, library and even an amazing auditorium. Tiny yachts are enough to go on an Antarctic trip. We bid the port farewell come Friday night. The next morning, we got the chance to behold a spectacle of marvelous southern sea birds as they glide, especially the remarkable albatrosses. Visit this site for further information on adventure antarctica cruises.

Tour guides mix in exciting lectures by various experts such as a marine biologist, bird specialist, historian, a geologist, and even an artist that teaches passengers how to draw and paint penguins and icebergs all to pass time while at sea. All throughout the trip, surprisingly, global warming was not discussed, but this was often in discussions.

Many of the trip’s highlights happened during landings on the continent and nearby islands. Seeing an avalanche in action or perhaps listening to the boisterous sound produced by a calving iceberg will never be forgotten. However, much can still be viewed from the ship’s glorious decks. Thanks to little hours of darkness during this time of year, many of the travelers are able to get more of what they came for.

So long as you’re heavily dressed to keep warm from strong winds, it’s easy to spend a couple of hours on deck watching a large array of wind carved icebergs floating by, some bright white, others various shades of blue. Passing through breathtaking landscapes, high mountains brimming with jewel like glacier caught our eyes as they hang. Once in a while, whales would show themselves. Sunsets take a while, lighting up the sky with its bright orange and red glory.

Alarming news greeted us as we returned to the ship for one elderly ill passenger had to be evacuated. Basically, this means that we need to get an airstrip way back in the Islands in South Shetland after a very long detour overnight. Evacuations such as this one, which can cost a patient up to tens of thousands of dollars are pushing many passengers aboard group trips to truly consider getting medical evacuation insurance.

Once the man got his medical evacuation and was sent to Chile, we sent ourselves to where newly Gentoo penguins were being fed, in the Island of Ardley. A slimy strand connects an adult penguin and its young after the adult penguin feeds its young by regurgitating a snack of krill by putting its tiny head inside her own mouth delicately.

posted by Vacation Home Rentals on May 27

They are there right now, sliding about the slippery surface of a rocky rookery wearing impeccable feathered tuxedos, seventy thousand pairs of them, a whole nation of these thigh-high birds. As a person looking for antarctica travel packages you should visit that site.

They constantly preen as they defend their chick’s nest from an unwanted neighbor, the chick hunting skuas and threat of a seal. The chicks, with brown colored down, scramble to thrust their beaks into their parents’ mouths for food.

The penguin parents are machines for feeding. When the mother returns with fish from the ocean a ritual of pecks and bows happens before the father heads off for his turn in the icy sea.

Penguins are actually not really as cute as people think. Penguins are foul-smelling and noisy, pugnacious and pushy. But large numbers of visitors to Antarctica every year to stand with them. The vast frozen landscape of the Antarctic really is like the edge of the world. This site teaches you about antarctica vacation.

There’s much more in the Antarctic to see. There are seals, albatross, dolphins, whales, and icebergs and an astonishingly beautiful landscape of glaciers with spires as tall as those found on European cathedrals and icebergs resembling dragons and mythical beings.

A stadium full of football fans is about the number of people who have been to this wonderful place before. A visit to Antarctica is like life?s best dream fulfilled, with nothing left to be desired. Reaching there is an adventure by itself. The trip is as expensive as it is fascinating and very special. Those who go from the United States brave at least 20 hours of air travel to Ushuaia, Argentina’s southern-most port, or Punta Arenas in Chile, Cape Town in South Africa, or Christchurch in New Zealand. Expedition cruise ships leave from these ports carrying enthusiasts to Antarctica. That’s still the only way to get there, and passengers endure several days of rough seas until they reach The Big Ice.

While Antarctica, as is seen above the surface of the water, is about a third larger than the U.S., the icy shelves surrounding it account for almost the same area in addition. With a thickness of two miles and exerting a massive pressure on the earth?s surface, this vast ice mass holds 70 percent of the Earth?s fresh water.

This February, from the 10th to the 18th, a total of nine vessels will be operating different tours to Antarctica. Except for one ship that carries 400 passengers, all the others carry a maximum of 200. They are less formal than larger cruise vessels plying Caribbean or Mediterranean waters; instead of casinos, they feature lectures and slide shows about Antarctica’s natural science and history.

Making landings using zodiac rafts, passengers can visit research stations where they can see scientists at work and also go past penguin rookeries and seal colonies.

The U.S., Argentina, Chile, China, Russia and other parties to the Antarctic Treaty maintain the research stations. Through the Antarctic Treaty, countries agreed to keep Antarctica free of borders, commercial and nuclear activity and to preserve it as an environmentally clean research facility. Some research stations welcome tourist s, others claim visits interfere with the work routine.

At Hope Bay, on a frozen plain, there are numerous orange-colored pre-fabricated bungalows that form Argentina?s Esperanza station where tourists can roam about in work areas as well as recreational facilities, church and school. Everyone and everything around including the military personnel, their team dogs, the meteorologists, the children and even the penguins seem to be enjoying each other?s company.

Chile’s Teniente Marsh station, which boasts of a convenience store, a restaurant and even a post office, is located on King George?s Island and is the biggest of the nine bases on that island. Nearby, China’s Great Wall Station personnel run a souvenir shop selling T-shirts, medals and stuffed penguins to tourists. The United States’ Palmer Station on Anvers Island is unique in the sense that it allows only certain ships at predetermined times. Tourists are not granted access to living quarters and research areas.