ANTARCTICA: After camping and zodiac tour

ANTARCTICA: After camping and zodiac tour

Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctica, Antarctica

Last night was literally the worst night of my life. At times I thought I was going to die, and other times, I thought I was going to kill someone else. It turned out that the snow only continued to get harder through the night, and we even broke the record for the most snow that has ever fallen on a camping night for this company. Lucky us.

The snow wouldn’t have been an issue if the bivvy bags they gave us were actually waterproof like they told us they would be. It turns out that the moisture from the snow could seep straight through the bivvy bag and soak everything inside it. This was pretty inconvenient. I didn’t know about this until I took off all my wet skins clothing and my big rubber boots. We were meant to take all that off and then use it as a pillow. Well I got in the sleeping bag only to find out that the inside of the bivvy bag was wet, and therefore the outside of my sleeping bag was wet too. Also, my backpack and camera bags were wet as well because I had put them in the bivvy bag but outside of the sleeping bag. I was worried about my valuable stuff, so I had to try and get my bags inside my sleeping bag with me.

I laid down in the sleeping bag and of course the wet skins and boots were cold and wet, so they weren’t the most comfortable pillows. Then I put the bivvy bag over my head to protect me from the snow, and that’s when the night turned really bad. Somehow this bag that is not waterproof, is airtight, and it makes it impossible to breathe. So not only did I have a wet bivvy bag on my face, but I was suffocating inside that bag. A couple times i laid in the bag for about three minutes and then realized I felt like I was suffocating and couldn’t find the opening to find my way out and I was panicking. I’ve never been claustrophobic in my life, but if that’s what it feels like, it’s terrifying.

I would finally get my head out of the bivvy bag and then I was getting snowed on. It was absolutely miserable having to choose from keeping your head in a wet plastic bag that was suffocating me, or outside getting covered in snow. Not to mention it’s impossible to fall asleep while snow is blowing in your face. This continued for about four hours until I decided to get up and put my wet skin jacket back on. It had a big hood so I figured I could get in the sleeping bag, and just pull the hood over my head so my face could stay out of the bivvy bag so I could breathe, and the hood would stop to the snow from falling on my face. This would have worked if there was no wind, but of course there was. So even though the snow wasn’t falling on my face, it was blowing into my face from all other directions.

This finally stopped at about 4:30am when I decided to give up and just get up and get dressed again. Ryan heard me, because of course he wasn’t sleeping either, so he got up too. We packed up all of stupid equipment that didn’t work and we were ready to get off that hellhole of an island by 5am. The first boat coming to pick us up was at 6am, but Ryan and I decided to head down to the shore to ensure that we were getting on the first boat back to the ship. We didn’t want to stay for one extra minute. It was then that we found out that the One Ocean people were staying down the hill in a big tent. Nice for them, but you would have thought that the passengers who paid tens of thousands of dollars, would be as comfortable, if not more comfortable, than the staff on the ship. But apparently not.

It turned out that everyone who camped and got the yellow bivvy bags like Ryan and I were given, didn’t get a wink of sleep. Some of the people who got the grey bivvy bags that came with a tent pole to keep the bag off your face, did get some sleep. So that was even more annoying. I don’t understand two things. 1. Why did they send us out to camp on a night it was snowing when they told us that definitely would not happen. 2. Why did they bother giving anyone the yellow bivvy bags that are completely useless.

We got back to the ship at about 6:30am and Ryan and I went straight to sleep in the cabin. We were so miserable we wanted nothing to do with the next excursion that was going out at 9am. So our night really sucked, and it forced us to miss the next excursion too, which made it even worse. We slept till noon, missed breakfast, and the excursion, and then finally got up for lunch.

We went for lunch, still a little pissed off about how last night went and then tried to forget about it and enjoy the afternoon excursion. That was not hard to do. We got in the zodiac to cruise around Wilhelmena Bay for a while looking for whales. As soon as we got out there we saw some minke whales in the distance, but they didn’t stick around for long. We still had a really good time just tooling around in the zodiacs, without even getting off the boat and walking on land. The landscape here is just so beautiful, it’s hard not to enjoy it when zipping around in a little boat.

We got back on the ship, had dinner, and then some humpback whales were spotted off the starboard side of the ship. Everyone rushed to the front right side of the ship and the whales put on quite a show for us. We think there were three or four of them, and they were flapping and breaching for us, which is definitely not something you get to see every day. It was very cool!

Tonight after dinner, it was also karaoke night. The Chinese group had brought a karaoke machine, so they set it up in the bar, and everyone was encouraged to join in. No surprise that they brought it with them though. They love karaoke in Asia. Also, it came as no surprise that Ryan was fairly quick to join in on the singing, and we even forced Reuben to get up there for a song too.

We ended up shutting down the bar at about 1:30am, and it was just because we felt bad that the Chinese tour group leader had to stay awake until we were done so she could get the machine back. It ended up being a really good night, and it accentuated just how bad last night really was. Thank god that nightmare is over, and we never have to do that again!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *