Our ship came in! It arrived at the harbour last night and is quietly waiting to receive us this afternoon. Our bags are repacked and have been trucked down to the docks.

This morning we had a "speed dating" event with the faculty, researchers, and journalists. Seamus O'Regan is here, a host on Canada AM. He will be documenting the expedition and his blogs are on the CTV Canada AM website.

I will lose the ability to connect to the internet this afternoon, so this will be my last entry here until we come back. I will be contributing to the Group website with photos and blogs for the next two weeks. There's a photo of me in my red VIU fleece, playing an ice breaker game on Day 3 on the Students on Ice Website http://www.studentsonice.com/U09/AUE-follow-expedition.html

The enteries are broken into days. Tab at the top to see the different days activities.

After the "speed dating", where we got to meet all the crew, we had a lecture given by Eric on the origin of Antarctica. The continent was part of the supercontinent 40 million years ago. Due to tectonics, the plates shifted and the land separated. Antractica remains isolated due to affects of the Southern Ocean where the world's strongest winds create the biggest currents and the largest waves, which all work to keep cold water circulating around the continent. This also keeps the warm water away and the point where the two meet is called the Antarctic Convergence.

Climate change is increasing the strength of the currents in this area. The world's mightiest currents flow west to east, driven by the winds, around Antarctica, however, there is a current flowing in the opposite direction around the shoreline. The amount of water travelling in the outer current is more then 200 times the flow of all the worlds rivers combined (Amazon, Nile, etc.)

On our crossing of the Drake Passage for the next two days we will encounter waves of 3 - 4 meters. At times in the Southern Ocean, waves can reach 8 meters. Wish me luck on the crossing.

Tomorrow I will be giving my class lecture on Introduction to Antarctic Tourism. 

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Feb. 14

Woke up at 2:30AM, got my suitcases down to the lobby and loaded them into the transfer car. The main street in Buenos Aires is the widest street in the world. It is 24 lanes in total, including two verges separating the outer lanes from the core lanes. And as my driver headed me to the airport, I learned that the dotted white lines on the roads are just suggestions as to where you should drive. Cars weaved all over the lanes. It was quite remarkable.

Got to the airport and enjoyed the relaxed security, and ease of checking in. No baggage weighing here, just put your bags onto the conveyor and away they go. There was only one x-ray machine, so we had to wait for the passengers arriving to clear before we could exit and have our carry-on´s x-rayed. Once through the checkpoint, we jumped on an old bus which drove us out onto the runway, where our plane was waiting to be loaded, using a portable staircase.

The air was still very hot and humid, even at 5:00 AM. The flight took 4 hours to Ushuaia. I saw an amazing sunrise from the air. 

Once we landed, the pilot pulled a U-turn on the single runway. I never realized that a 737 has such a short turning circle. I would have put money on him not having been able to complete the U-turn and having to do a 3 point turn instead. Do planes have a reverse gear? (Just kidding) But he did it - and I am safe on the ground at the end of the populated world. 

Feb. 13

Flew all through the night and 10½ hours later I arrived in Buenos Aires. It was a god thing I researched the destination beforehand and found out that it would be 27 C, or else I might have forgotten to pack some shorts. Walking off the plane, the humid hot air was a bit of a shock to the system, having been acclimatised to the Canadian winter.

Checked into our group’s hotel which was located in the heart of the city and on a lovely treed parkcade. Went for a walk in the sun, and enjoyed the Jacaranda trees lining the streets. Another tree I am not familiar with was in full bloom with large, very pretty pink flowers.

Once the main group arrived we went on a walking tour of the city and learned about the history of Buenos Aires from a city guide who was very passionate and gave great interpretation. We road on the subway which has very old cars which were donated to the city by Russia. The interiors are all wooden as are th seats. It was quite nostalgic.

We viewed the government buildings and listened to the stories of Eva Perron. We also heard about the 2001 collaspe of the economy and how the presidency turned over 5 times that year.

In Buenos Aires, the locals do not eat the evening meal until late. We went to a restaurant at 7PM which is really early by their standards. It may have something to do with the heat and humidity, but the locals came out to eat closer to 9PM. Dinner was the most amazing grilled steak I have ever eaten. It was 1 inch thick. The Argentinian´s love their meat.

Headed back to the hotel and straight to bed as I had to be up by 2:30AM to catch my next flight to Ushuaia. This was the second night where I would only get 2 hours sleep.

Feb. 12

After spending a late night completing my Antarctic Tourism assignment at 3AM, I didn’t get much sleep. I am sure that it also had something to do with the excitement of starting the adventure. Part of it was a fear of oversleeping and missing my flights.

Left the house at 6AM. Weather was cool, but not cold. There was a fresh dusting of snow on Mount Benson. The drive to the floatplane docks was quiet. Hardly a car on the road in Nanaimo at that time of the morning.

Had a pleasant flight From Nanaimo to Vancouver. Only 25 minutes by floatplane. Saw a lovely orange sunrise, reflected in the water over the Georgia Strait. Check out the photos posted on the photos page. Arrived all relaxed at Vancouver airport only to have a shock when I looked at the departures board and saw that the Continental flight to Houston, my carrier and my route, had just departed. After the initial shock, I started feeling panicky. Had a made an error in planning my route and not allowed enough time between flights to connect? I honestly thought that I had just missed my flight, and the whole trip suddenly at an end.

I thought for a minute and realised I had to ask at the desk if that was the correct information and had I really missed my flight. Upon further enquiry, I discovered that I was actually booked on a partner airline, Alaska Airways, and would be meeting up with the departed flight in Seattle, as previously planned. All was good, but then I had to check my bags. At first they wanted an extra payment for the second bag, and were asking me to pay. However, I had checked these details on the website the day before, just to be sure and  I had read that international travel allowed two free checked bags so when I questioned the clerk she agreed and no extra payment  was extracted from me. It pays to do a little research and to know what the rules are, in case they don’t.

The flight from Vancouver to Seattle was only 55 minutes. I got a great view of the fresh snow on the Olympic Mountains (photo posted).

I thought a lot about our course last year in Introduction to Tourism. I had been feeling the pre-trip excitement for the last couple of days. I am a very allocentric traveler who loves adventure and independent travel.

I noticed the differences in the quality of customer service at various airline businesses. For example, the floatplane staff were really friendly, welcoming and helpful, but the larger airlines offered less personal service.

We also learned about how airlines oversell seats to maximize profits, as they count on a percentage of ‘no-show’. This is called yield management, a concept that we learned about in economics. Well guess what happened on my Seattle to Houston flight – we ALL showed up. Staff were asking for volunteers who would accept $250 travel voucher to catch a later flight. Since I have a layover in Houston, I enquired how much later the other flight would depart, but it would be another 7 and ½ hours wait and too late to make my connecting flight to Buenos Aires. Come to think of it, a $250 travel voucher that is only good for Continental flights would not be much value to me. It would mean I would have to spend more money, in order to get something for free. Hummmm, doesn’t sound like a very good deal to me, I think I’ll just keep my seat.

Departed Seattle and headed for Houston, Texas. This was a five hour flight.

If there was one thing I took away from Dr. Aggie Weighill's Environmental Stewardship class, it was a deepening in my sense of responsibility for sustainability, and sustainable practices. The history of human involvement in the Antarctic is not stelar. Have a look below at what has transpired in less then 100 years.

What I find most disturbing regarding human involvement in the Antarctic are the statistics on the number of seals and whales taken between1904 and 1966. In Headland’s book, The Island of South Georgia, he documents the kills during this period of time as being an unsettling 175,250 whales and 260,950 seals (Baucer, 2001). But the grimmest of these details is that in 1926-1927, one single whaling season, 3,689 blue whales were slaughtered. By the 1958 – 1959 whaling season, only one blue whale could be caught, highlighting the near extinction of the population of the largest animal to ever live on earth (Baucer, 2001). Following the closure of the whaling and sealing stations, commercial fishing began in the 1969-1970 season, and since that time, overfishing has nearly collapsed that industry as well (Wilder, 1992 as cited in Baucer, 2001). The fish species most at risk is that Patagonian tooth-fish, and illegal and unregulated fishing threatens to devastate the remaining stocks.

Tourists, especially eco-tourists, are interested in viewing whales, seals and other wildlife in the Antarctic. Tourists are also interested in viewing the abandoned whaling stations as grime reminders of the past, and as a reminder that vigilance is required to prevent such tragedies in the future. Tourists have the potential to become advocates for the living marine resources.

No place, however cold or wet, or hot or high or deep is beyond the quest of man's ingenuity" (Gibson-Watt, 1967).

The above quote is attributed to a member of the Parliament of Great Britian and Northern Ireland during the 1967 Third Reading of the Antarctic Treaty Bill. It was prompted by debate regarding whether it was actually true that tourists were already traveling to Antarctic (Codling, 1982, as cited in Hall & Johnston, 1995).

Indeed, to some at this time this notion appeared too incredible to be true. What is incredible is that history has evidence of four tourists traveling to Macquarie Island, a sub-Antarctic island in 1891. The idea of an Antarctic cruise was proposed as far back as 1910, but it took until 1966 for regular tourist cruises to be established (Reich, 1980).