The Pampa

A land of millions of sheep and fluffy white clouds.

It stretches from Buenos Aires to the tip of South America.

Flat, dry and windy windy windy.

The road from Ushuaia to Punta Arenas... miles and miles and miles of the same...

Gah.  12 hours on a bus.  For some reason Chile hasn't paved the last 100 miles to Argentina.  Awesome.

8am flight tomorrow to Santiago.  Need to start figuring out how to buy this motorcycle...

In one of history´s great ironies...

... a ex-Soviet spy boat, piloted by an ex-Soviet attack submarine captain, drives old Europeans and Americans around Antarctica.

True story.  Our boat was built as a Polar ¨Research¨ (e.g. spy) vessel.  Our Captain patrolled the Atlantic for U.S. nuclear subs.

Then, the Soviet Union fell apart. 

Then, an entrepreneur figured out Antarctic tourism was booming while Russia´s military was desperate for money.  Hello, Soviet crew, Soviet boat, and Western social-security money.

El Capitan on the bridge. 

The Captain ¨like very much¨the charts.

50% Tchaikovsky, 50% Russian Techno for the bridge.

The 2nd mate.

If you love ice, cold and penguins...

...Antarctica is your continent.

Other trips on smaller sailboats.  You can see the scale of the glaciers here - most had 80 - 200 feet of ice hanging into the water.

Millions of penguins - we must have seen a couple of thousand in just in a week.  Late February is getting close to the end of the breeding season, and these chicks will soon take to the sea.

Penguins, snow and ice and the Polar Pioneer, our home for 11 days.  The shack is a refuge maintained by the Argentinians in case of an emergency.

Austere and beautiful.

None of the wildlife seems to mind humans too much... this is a fur seal looking annoyed.

Almost 2 months since leaving a civilized life in Boston.

Antarctica

Boat leaves this evening.  Back the 26th.

50 passengers - average age, 50.  Half will be diving.  The rest of us will be hanging with the Nat Geo photographer.

Not going to be much contact with the outside world down there. 

Just me, the Russian crew, a bunch of nonegenarion dry suit divers and the local pinguinos.