Antarctica: Day 1 & 2
Embarking and the Drake Passage
After our second night in Buenos Aires we woke up in the morning, had breakfast, and then got on a bus from the hotel to the airport. Quark charters a flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia which sounds fancy, but in reality was just a budget airline’s plane. We landed in the small Ushuaia airport, got our bags over to Quark, and then went out and explored the city for a couple of hours.
Ushuaia is beautiful. I would love to go back someday and explore Tierra del Fuego National Park nearby, but just like Buenos Aires it was only a small pitstop to getting to Antarctica. We walked around, ate some lunch, bought some small things, and then made our way over to the boat once it was time.
Once onboard we found our room and then got to know the boat. We had “Helicopter Familiarization” time to look at the helicopters, a lifeboat drill, a “Welcome & Safety Briefing”, dinner, and then went back to our room to get some sleep. We started the next day with breakfast and then had a day of presentations and briefings on the boat as we started making our way through the Drake Passage.
Every breakfast and lunch was served as a buffet. They had a pretty good variety of food available to choose from, specialties you could pick, desserts, drinks, and some special requests you could make. I’ve only been on Royal Caribbean and Norwegian cruises but the food on Quark completely blew away what you get on the regular cruise lines. Every dinner had unique options to order from and included a starter, soup, main course, and dessert. If none of that night’s items interested you then they also had grilled chicken, grilled salmon, or ribeye steak always available. I can’t remember exactly what I had the first two dinners, but looking back at the menus (which they email you as part of the overall trip photo journal), I probably had something like this for dinner 1:
Selection of Fresh Lettuces & Marinated Salad
Chicken Consommé
Slow Roasted Cajun Marinated Pork Loin
Mississippi Mud Pie
and this for dinner 2:
Breaded & Sesame Coated Fried French Brie
Beef Broth Royale with Julienne of Vegetables
Fillet Mignon of Locally Sourced Argentinian Beef
Dark & White Chocolate Truffle Tart
I don’t think I had a meal I didn’t like on this trip. Everything was consistently high quality and kept me out of the dreaded “food fatigue” you get 3 days in on a Caribbean cruise when you start realizing every lunch is just leftovers from breakfast made into something new and every dinner is leftovers from breakfast and lunch in a different sauce.
After dinner each night there was usually another presentation or lecture put on by one of the crew members, but I found I was often pretty worn out and ready to go watch a movie in our room or sleep. The boat has plenty of movies you can watch in your room and I also brought my Retroid Pocket for some gaming.
I thought the boat days might be a bit boring, but with how often you’re eating and how many presentations and safety briefings we had the day was soon over. Despite everything I had heard about the Drake Passage and how extreme it could be crossing it, it was completely fine. We were very lucky and had a smooth experience, no medication needed (which was good because I was probably overconfident in my ability to not get nauseous and didn’t bring any seasickness medicine. I’m undecided on if I’ll bring some the next time we go to with Keira in ~15 years or so). We had left home at noon on February 27th and it was now March 3rd, over four days into the trip. It took a long time to get from home to the middle of the Drake Passage and we knew when we woke up we would finally be within reach of exploring our seventh continent.