Gearing Up!

I’m posting this from New Orleans where I’ll be for the next few days.  It’s my third time to the city and first time back since Katrina.  I’ve only been around the French Quarter so far.  I may try to get out and see the rest of the city if time allows.  So far, I can vouch for the chicken/andouille sausage gumbo at Emeril’s NOLA restaurant.  I’m currently sipping a cup of chicory coffee from Cafe du Monde and trying to decide if it is the best coffee I’ve ever had.  It may well be.

Less than 20 days now until I head south!  Before I left for New Orleans I began checking things off of my gear and supplies list, the first of which was prescription motion sickness medicine.  I think I mentioned previously that I am no good on the water in rough conditions, so I needed something with an extra kick for the journey across the Drake Passage, which was nicknamed “The Drake Shake”.  The medicine my doctor ended up prescribing is called Phenergan (Promethazine) and is routinely given to cancer patients after chemotherapy to quell nausea and dizziness.  I’ve never taken it before, so like everything else on this trip, it’ll be a first.

I also went to REI and bought the first round of gear – the big-ticket items like my parka and my waterproof pants.  I was leaning toward a standard 3-in-1 integrated parka like something North Face sells, but I ended up buying each layer separate.  For the insulating layer, I bought a Marmot down-filled jacket and then an REI brand red waterproof/windproof parka for the outer shell.  I also bought a pair of REI waterproof/windproof shell pants as well as some waterproof gloves and wool hiking socks.  I’ll be heading back to REI to pick up the final odds and ends and taking advantage of some Thanksgiving sales when I get home from New Orleans.

I started lining up my gear on the floor the other night, which is a ritual I have before any big trip.  That’s usually when the reality of the trip starts to hit me.  Judging by the gear on the floor, the reality of this trip will be cold, wet and wild.

And I can’t wait.

Ship on Ice

A friend alerted me to the story of a Russian icebreaker that was caught in Antarctic ice late last week with over 100 tourists on board.

Today they announced that the ship is moving and should be back in the open sea in the next few days.

You can read the article here.

My ship isn’t an icebreaker and won’t be going as deep into the ice, but still, it gives one pause.

Nuts (and bolts)

I’ve received my fair share of strange looks when I tell people I’m going to Antarctica, but that usually gives way to a barrage of questions about the who/what/when/where/how of the trip.  I thought I’d share the answers here, as best I can.  This is all new territory for me, so I can tell you what is supposed to happen, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about travel is that it rarely goes to plan.

From a bird’s eye view I will fly more or less straight down from Baltimore to the bottom of the earth.  This is pretty cool because as far as I will be traveling, I will only be passing over one or two time zones, so the jetlag coming and going will be hardly noticeable.  I will be leaving Baltimore on Tuesday, December 8 and flying to Miami where I will pickup an overnight flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  I’ll change planes as well as airports here and transfer to the domestic airport where I will board a flight to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world.

The port of Ushuaia

I will have a day to explore Ushuaia and get my bearings before the expedition briefing and departure on our ship, the MV Lyubov Orlova.  I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is yes, the ship was named after Lyubov Petrovna Orlova, the first star of Soviet cinema.  Unlike the deceased starlet, however, the ship is in fine working order and will depart the port of Ushuaia on Friday, December 11.  It will be two days crossing the open waters of the Drake Passage before arriving, finally, to Antarctica.

MV Lyubov Orlova

I wanted to make sure that this was not a stand-on-the-deck-and-take-pictures kind of trip, so along with day hikes on the land, we will also be kayaking in the open sea and bays as well as spending one night tent camping on the continent.  I’m in the midst of gearing for the trip and have made at least three trips to REI and I anticipate a few more.  We have to be prepared for snow, ice, rain, wind and sun which will be up about 24 hours a day.  The company also suggested packing a bathing suit as there may be a chance to do a Polar Plunge.

The return trip will be back across the Drake Passage and then the reverse flight route back into Baltimore, where I should arrive a day or two before Christmas.  I look forward to a piping hot Christmas dinner to warm my frozen extremities.

Number Seven

I mentioned in the previous post that I set the goal of seven by thirty back when I got home from living in England.  The other continents were daunting enough, but I really had no idea how I was going to get to Antarctica, or even if I could.  The things I knew about Antarctica at the time were:

1) It was cold and white

2) Many people had died trying to get there.  I hoped I would not add my name to the list.

3) There was (and still is) a theory that the mythical continent of Atlantis was actually Antarctica before it was covered with ice

This was the extent of my knowledge but as I continued to travel, I found that there are companies that run polar expedition ships from many of the major southern ports to the continent itself.  I remember being excited about the possibility of getting there, until I read that the waters around Antarctica can be some of the roughest in the world.  This put a damper on my plans.  I have Epic motion sickness on the water.  I once spent three excruciating hours hugging a toilet off the northwest coast of Scotland among many other experiences I won’t go into here.

I was bummed, until I found that there are flights to Antarctica!  To be precise, there are tourist sightseeing flights OVER Antarctica.  This would be violating my rule of stepping foot on the continent, but if it was the only way for me to do it, I was willing to accept that.  It didn’t matter.  The prices for flights that I found were anywhere between $13,000 and $30,000.

So, that was that, and for a while I thought I may never actually go.  The prices were too steep, the conditions too rough, and the place just too damn difficult to get to.  But one day I was chatting with a relative in the Coast Guard and he mentioned he had been to Antarctica and I lamented the flight prices and my extreme motion sickness on the water.  He told me about a prescription medicine used in the Coast Guard that does wonders for nausea.  So I started to think that maybe this could actually happen.

Then one Sunday morning this past summer, I sat down with my coffee and spent hours in front of the computer researching the different companies that go there, the prices, and the activities.   One thing that day did was dispel my worries about the price of the trip.  Let’s be clear about this: the trip is very expensive.  But it is not $30,000 expensive.  Some of the trips I found were actually quite reasonable.  By the end of Sunday I had narrowed my options.  By the end of Monday I had decided on my trip and by lunch on Tuesday I had booked.

And that was that.  I was going to Antarctica.

On December 14, 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team raised their flag at the South Pole, beating a British exploration team led by Robert Scott, and becoming the first people to stand at the very bottom of our planet.  About the continent, Amundsen said: “The land is like a fairy tale.”

Welcome!

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog!

Q:  Sigh.  Does the world really need another blog?
A:  No.  No, it does not.

I created this blog anyway because I am excited and I want to share my excitement with you.  If you know me even a little bit, you know that one of my obsessions it travel.   When I came home from my first major trip abroad living in the UK during college, I remember vividly how many people told me “do it while you’re young!”  They talked about how life can grab hold of you and pull you in different directions and if you are not careful your life goals can fall by the wayside.  I didn’t have any direct experience with what they were talking about, but I was told the same thing by so many people that it stuck with me.

And that was when I set a goal to step foot on all seven continents by the time I was thirty, hence the name of this blog.  As of this writing I have been to six continents.  As of this writing I am not getting any younger.

So in December of this year I will be completing my goal and setting out on an expedition to Antarctica.  I am incredibly excited at the trip ahead.

In order to assuage some of the jealousy that arises from my getting to go to the coldest, highest, driest and windiest place on earth in the dead of winter, I will be posting about the specifics of the trip as often as I can leading up to departure.  I’m also hoping to send updates  as often as I can during the trip, either through blog posts or my Twitter feed, which you can see on the right.

Along with my thoughts on heading to the white continent, I’m hoping to share some ideas and opinions about travel as well as stories about my jaunts around the other six continents.

Before I sign off, I’d like to give props to my fellow travel mate Gordana who took the picture that heads this blog.  We were hiking the Inca Trail deep in the Andes and had stopped to make camp for the night.  I walked up onto a bluff just above the campsite to look out over the mountains and she snapped this pretty groovy picture.  I have it hanging in my apartment.  I thought I’d hang it here as well.

Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned for more posts!