Doing the two day journey through the Drake Passage is an actually passage, well, a rite of passage, for those heading down to Antarctica.

This passage is a notorious rough journey as it is where three bodies of water meet to create unruly water to sail through.

With massive waves, ships will rock quite a bit as they pass through the passage.

Now, they say there are two kinds of Drake – the Drake Lake and the Drake Shake.

Well, as you can imagine, we were all crossing our fingers for the Drake Lake which is as calm as it gets.

Last night during our meeting, our expedition leader Johnathon told us that on a scale of 1-10 the Drake was about a 0.3 right now which was met with cheers and relief from everyone.

Bring on the Drake Lake!

A rough morning

I went to bed around 10 last night and, honestly, the sleep was pretty comfortable.

All my worries about whether I’d be seasick seemed to have subsided.

Even when we actually entered the Drake Passage in the wee hours of the morning and the boat started shaking quite violently, I was able to sleep just fine.

Yes, indeed, I had survived the night and I was feeling good.

I asked someone about the massive waves in the middle of the night and they said that we were probably a 2 or 3 on the Drake scale and the waves were “only” 3 meters.

To put that in context, the worst she had seen was 9 meter waves where she saw a guy literally throw up, like upwards towards the ceiling.

At 6:30 I was the first one up in our room and I gingerly tip toed around and got ready for the day.

I bounced up the stairway to the lounge area with laptop in hand ready to type up yesterday’s blog.

I started typing and, well, it hit me.

My stomach was not feeling so great anymore.

I wasn’t sick but I certainly didn’t feel well, that’s for sure.

There would be no more typing on a laptop for me today.

I tried to go back to bed but that didn’t help and then I tried to just walk out in the cool air on deck but, alas, that didn’t help either.

I finally found a nice spot in the middle center of the ship on a couch in the library to just sit and relax and let my stomach calm down.

Here in the library because it was so centered, there was less ship movement so it was the perfect place to revitalize myself.

I ended up spending pretty much the whole morning just camped out there by myself skipping breakfast, a seminar on “Why the glacier ice is blue” and a class on penguins which I really wanted to see.

It was the right move for me, though, as I was back to 100% by the time lunch came around at noon.

A little history

After lunch, now that I was feeling better, I decided to join the 2pm seminar “Once upon the ice” with Meru, a historian from Argentina.

We learned the history of the different explorations down to Antarctica and the completion to find land further and further south.

We also learned about how different countries claimed different regions of the continent before everyone came together in 1959 to put rules in place going forward with regards to it.

Now, no country has claim to any part of Antarctica and it’s been designated as a scientific land mass.

Camp meeting

After the seminar, there was a mandatory meeting for those of us who had paid for the overnight camping option on this trip.

Out of the 131 passengers, 60 of us had doled up the extra $500 to spend a night camping on a glacier here in Antarctica.

We all met up in the lounge with our camp leaders Matt and Vanessa to run through what the camping experience entailed.

Matt started the slideshow off with a slide of “Are you sure?” followed by another of “No really… Are you sure?”.

I mean, when you think of it, it takes a special kind of crazy to want to camp out in freezing temperatures but here we all were eagerly waiting to do it.

They are aiming to do the camping in a couple of days and are expecting temperatures of around -4C which, in all honestly, isn’t really that bad.

We got a demonstration on how the portable toilet will work which, by the way, is affectionately called the “yum yum” as well as how to pitch our tent when we arrive on land.

Harper, my roommate, and I will be sharing a tent and I’m hoping he takes the lead with the tent building cause, well, I kinda suck at that kind of stuff.

So, yeah, in a couple of days I’ll be camping overnight on an Antarctic glacier!

Welcome cocktails

At 6:00 we were all invited back to the lounge for a welcome cocktail with the captain and his crew.

I was greeted with a sparkling glass of champagne and some passed hor d’oeurves.

Well, this is the kind of meeting I could get used to.

There was a quick introduction of the crew and then some exciting, unexpected news.

Because the passage through the Drake was so calm we were able to move at a faster pace and, as a result, we’ll be able to make an unplanned landing a full day earlier than expected!

The room erupted in cheers – yes, we are going to see penguins tomorrow!

Captain’s dinner

Soon after all that excitement it was time for dinner.

I haven’t mentioned it yet but the ship has a head waiter named Randy who I was told to introduce myself to when I first boarded because of my gluten allergy.

He checked his list of all the different people with allergies and found me.   Ever since, every time I enter the dining room he greets me by name and makes sure that my gluten allergies are looked after.

I usually sit in a table on the right hand side and get the same server, Francis, every time and he always remembers my allergy so when I’m presented with my plate it’s been modified if it was normally served with gluten.

Now that’s service!

Tonight was a plated 4 course meal that started with a caprese salad and orange soup followed by roast lamb and then meringue with cream for dessert.

The food was amazing but what really made the dinner was the company I had at my table.

Tonight I was seated with my roommate Harper, another guy Mark also from Perth, Ella originally a cheesehead now living in Colorado, Erin from Sydney, and Marion from Champagne, France.

It was such an eclectic group of people and I loved hearing both their personal stories and their travel stories.

Erin a midwife from Sydney has been traveling around the world for a year and Marion has been traveling for almost as long with her partner who, it turns out, is currently visiting in Ecuador while she is down here with us.

Pablo in concert

After dinner while most of our table headed to bed, I ventured over to the lounge for a little concert.

Pablo, our resident musician on board, was there to play a variety of both Spanish and English songs.

With the lights low and a strobe light shining blue and purple lighting on the ceiling, Pablo strummed his guitar and sang to us.

I was seated next to a group of three girls – Robin from northern New Zealand, Constance from Vienna, and Laura from Belfast.

At one point the conversation shifted to who we all thought was hooking up with who.

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t even thought of that but apparently they were all about the gossip and had watched a bunch of Below Deck where apparently people hook up all the time.

Hey, I was having fun.   Here I am sitting with 3 girls watching a man play his guitar talking gossip.

After awhile though I started to again get that feeling in my stomach.

We were sitting on the far edge of the lounge where you can really feel the rocking of the boat so that’s what did it.

I did what I know best and headed up to the library.   The place was empty and peaceful.   I curled up on the couch and before I knew it, it was 1am.

I had snoozed there for a couple of hours but now I was back to normal.   I’m telling you, the library cures all.

Anyway, I snuck into my room at 1am, slipped under the covers and dreamed of all the penguins I’ll see tomorrow…

Edit Note: I am currently still sailing in the Antarctica with limited expensive internet.   I’ll be uploading all my photos and videos into a gallery at the end of this post when I arrive back on land.