Ushuaia - Antarctica
December 21st 2003 - January 4th 2004

To read more and see the photos check the individual pages
 

After booking my last trip to Australia I realised that I would have set foot on almost every continent in the world in 2003.

I reasoned that I ought to complete one of my life goals, which was to set foot on every continent on the planet.  So I had to book a trip to Antarctica.

I looked on the internet to find out about Antarctic tourism and found a surprising amount of information. It was then a question of finding a trip that I could take with the few remaining days leave I had from work, and of course finding a way to pay for it!

In the end I settled on a company called Discover the World to arrange my visit to Antarctica.

http://www.discover-the-world.co.uk

Discover the World were very helpful, as one of the first problems I found was getting a flight to Argentina!  I'm used to booking every aspect of my trip myself, and expected to book my own flights, hotels and so on.  But Discover the World managed almost everything for me, the flights, Ushuaia hotel and of course the cruise to Antarctica.

I booked the 'Classic Antarctica' trip, that starts in Ushuaia and is run by Quark Expeditions.  On December 23rd the Professor Multanovskiy, a Finnish built Russian crewed ice strengthened ship took us across the Drake Passage to the South Shetland Islands and then on to Antarctica itself.

There was of course the most amazing wildlife, including albatross, storm petrels, penguins of many types (including Gentoo, Adelie, Macaroni and Chinstrap), blue-eyed shags, crabeater and leopard seals, humpback and minke whales.

You can see some photos on the pages for each area we visited on the voyage.

The Professor Multanovskiy

Hey, have you heard?  BearUK's coming to visit! Lets go and say hello!