My Cruise to Antarctica: What I Packed, What We Did

I went kayaking in Foyn Harbor at Enterprise Island in Antarctica. It was a perfect day for a paddle.

By John Roberts 
This is the third part in a four-part series of posts on my cruise to Antarctica with Albatros Expeditions on the Ocean Victory cruise ship. 
 
Read Part One: Embarkation Day in Ushuaia 
Read Part Two: Crossing the Drake Passage
Read Part Four: A Big Finish and My Final Thoughts

Also, check out my video showing you cruise packing tips and your gear guide for an expedition cruise to Antarctica.

Video: Antarctica Activities and Packing for Your Cruise

Days 4, 5 and 6: Out for Plenty of Adventures 
Where We Were 
The fourth day of the voyage brought us to Enterprise Island and Foyn Harbor for our morning stop. In the afternoon, Ocean Victory transited to Charlotte Bay and Portal Point, where we set foot on the continent of Antarctica for the first time during this sailing.  
The weather was stunningly perfect, with the shining sun and mostly blue skies offering an incredible backdrop to the numerous bobbing icebergs, growlers and bergy bits floating in the channels and harbors that we navigated during a busy day.

I climbed the hill on Cuverville Island to get an incredible view of the bay.

On the following days, we stopped at Cuverville Island, Paradise Bay (for Brown Station, an Argentinian research station), Port Lockroy and through the scenic Neumayer Channel to Damoy Point. 
For the shore landings, this is how it works. The Albatros expedition team takes us ashore in Zodiacs at each of our landing sites. The team goes ashore before we arrive and stakes out areas that are safe to walk and places flags to let us know our boundaries. This allows us to visit safely while also keeping our distance from the animals so we don't stress them out too much.  
The penguins are busy nesting and mating this time of year, and we saw the first eggs being tenderly cared for as mother and father penguins traded off duties of watching the egg and going out to the waters to feed. 

What We Did 
Albatros offers programs for kayaking, snowshoeing and overnight camping. I chatted with a several fellow cruisers who were excited to do it all. "You only come here once," said my new friend Manuel, who lives in Chicago and was kind enough to be my kayaking partner in Foyn Harbor for the day.  
I stuck with kayaking as my one premium excursion, and we went in ideal conditions, paddling easily through glassy waters. Guides take out 10 people at a time in five two-person kayaks, and a lottery is used to pick the group order for who goes first. This is done because there might be only one or two days with nice enough weather conditions to allow kayaking -- and demand for the kayaking excursions is pretty high.  
Our voyage offered everyone a chance to go out, though, because the weather was fantastic and the waters plenty safe for paddling.

Our kayaking excursion in Foyn Harbor took us out to a fascinating 100-year-old shipwreck.

At Cuverville Island, we walked among the largest gentoo penguin colony in Antarctica. This stop also offered a nice steep hike up the side of the hill to achieve a vista that offered amazing views of the ice, the penguin colonies perched along the island and our sleek Ocean Victory cruise ship sitting in the bay. 
There are daily Zodiac cruises that pair with the landings, as the four groups swap off (regulations allow just 100 people ashore on land at a time). We had a spectacular barbecue on the top deck in the sunshine, and we were surrounded by the glorious steep white peaks on each side of the vessel as we sailed away from Paradise Cove (more on this lunch in the bottom section of this post).

After leaving Paradise Cove, we dropped off a group of about 20 people who signed up for the overnight camping experience. They left after dinner and came back on the ship the next morning around 5 a.m. with a range of emotions about the experience.  
They said they loved the pristine solitude, with the sounds of cracking ice and the snores of fellow campers as the only things breaking the silence. Many didn't sleep much, but most said it was worth doing one time. Some said they saw sea lions lolling about on shore, as well. It's mostly about bragging rights to say that you slept on an island in Antarctica. This experience costs $350.

I mailed a postcard from the Penguin Post Office at Port Lockroy.

Port Lockroy is a small museum, post office (the famed Penguin Post Office) and gift shop that is nestled on the tiny island of Goudier. We went ashore to see the buildings set right in the middle of a gentoo penguin colony that occupies the island. The museum is the former commercial whaling station in the early 20th century and later a British military base during WWII. The building has been preserved with many items in it that show life in the barracks for the four to 10 men who lived there at that time.  
The post office is popular, as visitors love to send postcards around the world from there. It handles more than 70,000 pieces of mail a year. I dropped in a card that costs one British pound to send anywhere throughout the world. It goes by ship to the Falkland Islands, then to England to enter the British Mail Service before getting sent on to its final destination. I was told the process can take anywhere from two weeks to several months.

More than 70 people took the polar plunge, braving the 35-degree icy waters at Damoy Point in Antarctica.

After our visit to Damoy Point, with landings and Zodiac tours of the ice-filled bay, Albatros offered its fun ritual -- the Polar Plunge. Dozens of cruisers eagerly lined up to jump into the icy waters. 
What We Saw   
Aside from the humpbacks and a few penguins in the waters during our kayaking session, there were always hundreds to thousands of penguins on land in each place. The Zodiac tours also revealed sightings of leopard seals and Weddell seals. Of course, there were always incredible ice formations, with a range of brash ice, sea ice, bergy bits, growlers and icebergs in the waters, as well as glaciers coming down the valleys on some islands.

The hot tubs on Ocean Victory were popular spots after activities like kayaking and the polar plunge.

We loved seeing Weddell seals relaxing on the icebergs.

During my two-plus hour kayaking session at Enterprise Island and Foyn Harbor, we paddled out to a 100-year-old shipwreck and a nest of mating Antarctic terns. We also saw feeding humpbacks whales as we tooled around the picturesque ice formations in the harbor. 
Around Port Lockroy, we got a couple unique sightings. In the bay, a large brown petrel was snacking on a dead penguin. I asked Albatros ornithologist Ab Steenvoorden, who is from the Netherlands, how the penguin might have been killed, curious as to whether the petrel could have done that. Ab told me that it was likely that the penguin died from injuries from an attack from a leopard seal and that the petrel was just finishing off the remains. A fascinating look at life in the wild, indeed.  
During a Zodiac cruise around the island, we also came upon four large Weddell seals (known for their gray fur and sweet round eyes) who were resting on an iceberg.

I filled up my plate at the barbecue that the Ocean Victory team served up outside on a beautiful day during our cruise with Albatros Expeditions.

The cruise offered a great array of food, including meals at a Hot Rocks restaurant each evening, where you cook up steaks and other meats on a superheated lava rock.

Here is a look at all I packed for my Antarctica cruise with Albatros. Video at the top of this post explains all the items.

What I Ate 
The ship features two restaurants. The main Beagle Restaurant serves buffet breakfasts and lunches, as well as plated dinners with full menus. It also has the Panorama restaurant up top on Deck 8 that offers buffet breakfasts and lunches. But for dinner, it becomes the Hot Rocks experience where you cook your own meat on a superheated lava rock. You can choose, sirloin steak, pork tenderloin, lamb chops, salmon and tuna. And you get a full range of sides, soups and appetizers.
I dined at Hot Rocks twice over the course of a few days because it's so good. 
We had marvelous weather conditions, and Paradise Bay provided a great backdrop for our on-deck barbecue. Chefs grilled up ribs, chicken, a full pig, brats, burgers, hot dogs and fish.  
Plates were filled with meats and the numerous sides placed out on tables around the deck, and cruisers joined tables and loungers or grabbed spots just inside at the Panorama Restaurant to fill up on the great food while taking in the awesome scenery.

Thanks for reading,
JR