ANTARCTICA: Boarding the Vavilov!

ANTARCTICA: Boarding the Vavilov!

Drake Passage, Antarctica, Antarctica

We got up and packed up our few things and headed out of the hotel by about 11am. We were supposed to leave our big bags at the hotel for the tour company to pick up and they would bring them straight to the ship. We didn’t have a lot of instructions though, so we just wrote Exodus/One Ocean on some tape and left it on the bags. Since we weren’t confident about this process, we headed down to the One Ocean Expeditions office to make sure we did it correctly. It turns out we really needed to put our names on the bags, so we headed back up the hill to make sure our names were clearly visible on the bags.

We then tried to find a place to have breakfast, but apparently that is an impossible task in all of Argentina. We ended up having to wait until after noon to go to a place that was recommended from our hotel. It was a nice little french cafe where we had some really good soups and paninis to get us ready for the day.

We tried to go souvenir shopping after lunch, but it turns out all the shops close for about two hours at lunch time, so nothing was open. We had to meet at a bar in town to get together with everyone else from the cruise at 3pm, so we weren’t able to go shopping at all in the end. We did go back up to the hotel to check that our bags were picked up, and the lady picked them up just as we got there. I used the wifi at the hotel to make a few last minute phone calls and emails before getting on the ship, where we will be cut off from the outside world for a long time.

We sat down at a big table in the bar and checked out all the other people that were coming on the same trip as us. A nice Aussie couple sat down with us, Reuben and Ainsley, and had a little chat before we got onto a bus to head to the ship. We got to the ship, found our room, and our bags were delivered to us as promised. Our room is pretty nice. They have put us in a three person room, but there are only two of us, so we have a spare bunk where Ryan can put all of his gear. This means that I have a small closet that I can use so we can completely unpack and get our suitcases out of the room for the next nine days.

We went down to the dining room and sat with Reuben and Ainsley for dinner. We met a few more Aussies at our table and got to hear the first briefing from the man in charge of our journey, Boris. He seems like a nice enough guy, but just all business. It sounds like we have a tough couple of days ahead of us on the Drake Passage. A few of the other ships in Ushuaia are actually waiting to start their trip a day late so that they miss the storm, but we are heading straight out into it. Should be fun. Ryan and I took one Dramamine each just in case, but neither one of us has ever been sea sick before. This would be a horrible time to start though. Let’s see what tomorrow has in store for us…

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