Antarctica

Hi All,
I will write until the tablet gets tired and then start again!
WEll, I don't have the words to adequately describe this trip. It has been amazingî f rom start to finish. Of course the flight from Adelaide to Sydney was nothing, apart that it was a very hot day, and with parking up the motor hpme and getting to the airport, it was pretty uncomfortable. We spent the night at the Stamford Airport hotel, with a 4am call for the airport. No problems there we board a Lan Airways flight to Aukland, Santiago, and then Buenos Aires. The only food they fed us was bread and ham and cheese! We did get a very small (even by airline standards} meal of veal, but otherwise it was bread and cheese and ham, and bread and ham and cheese, all very stale. and not to my taste as bread stucks in my craw these days, oh well it saved me eating too much. They also weren't too keen to give us drinks either. Lan has gone to the bottom of my airline list.. We had a nice couple of days in Buenos Aires, a really good guide , who was easy to understand, took us on a city tour, including seing Evita's tomb, then we walked to a market and had a delicious and tasty and tender Argentine steak, melted in your mouth, good beef too.  So after a walk around  La Boca, an area known for where the Tango started, it is very colourful, with a lot of uildings made out of corrugated iron, but painted in all the colours of the rainbow. We were given lots of warnings of thieving and pick pockets etc, and not to wear gold jewellry on the streets, but nothing happened to us, at least. Then another early morning call 3.30am, and we were off to the airport for our flight to Ushuaia. VEry cold when we got there and rainy, they piled us into buses for a tour around the peninsula, including a great bbq lunch, lamb, and salads and wines etc. very tatsy, they bbq the whole side of lamb propped up around a huge fire, 6/8 sides at once, and they serve all the animal, not the heads, but you get the picture, some bits were more boney than others but really tasty . We finally got delivered to the ship about 5  pm.
Our cabin was a bit squeezy, with 3of us in it, but we quickly sorted ourselves out, unpacked and got organised. This is a very luxurious 5 star ship, but an Expedition ship, not a cruise, as they frequently told us. aSo lots of lectures etc, and no bingo! First evening the captain, Le Commandant, warned us of bad weather across Drake Pasage, so we were laying sailing until midnight in hopes of missing the worst!!! Ha! We all went to bed with great trepidation, but morning came and we could see, huge seas, and howling winds, oh mi god!! but, I was happy to be ok. sat and sewed my patchwork blocks, went to lunch, thought iI'll just take a Kwells to be on the safe si, and was very happy all crosing. Most I would say were not so lucky. Carol and I fared very well, but not so Poor Rob, He took to his bed and that was that. Apparently we had seas of 13 metre s, 160km hr winds, the wavees were washing the bridge 5 cks up!! #,and it was a force 9/10 gale. The worst the captain had had, all season! And on the third day it cleard and the sun shone, and we saw icebergs, and icebergs and we were nearly there. THE GREAT WHITE SOUTH LAND. Wow. Out came our Red Parkas, our zodiac lifevests, our rubber boots and every piece of clothing we had, we were going ashore!! Truly amazing, the expedition crew helped us in and out of the zodiacs, sometimes we had a dry landing and sometimes a wet one, always a bit nerve racking in case the water was deeper than my boots! but all the clothes worked, I was always dry and warm enough, except for the fingers during photography. The big warm ski gloves are a bit clumsy when trying to adjust cameras etc. So we saw penguins, in english and pinguines , in ench, and still more penguins. three types, Chinstraps, they were easy to tell as they had a little black chinstrap unr their chins, Adelies and Gentoos, which I still am not sure which are which, one has an orange beak, and the other is the tuxedo penguin. We saw hundreds and smelt lots of penghuin poo. every landing and return to the ship, you had to wash your boots in sea water first, then once on the ship, they had these big scrubbing buckets, for you to put your feet into and scrub offf the penguin poo, and your hiking sticks, then it was walk to a bath of very strong disinfectant, to walk through and put your sticks in, then walk up a deck to the boot puller offs. great things a "v" of wood you put your heel into and just as easy as that pulled your foot out of the boot and walked back to your cabin in your socks, carrying your boots. Outside each cabin was a mat where your boots lived until the next call to go out.
So we were incredibly lucky apparently, as we had 4straight brilliantly sunny days