Every Day is Sunday

THE AIRPORT.  The voice on the other end of the line had a sense of urgency: “The van will pick you up tomorrow at 7:00 am to drive you to the airport.  Please be prompt – this is not 7:00 am ‘Chilean time.’”  True to their word, the airline’s van driver was waiting for us in the lobby of our hotel at 6:50 am. 

 

We were uncharacteristically quiet on the van ride as we grappled with the uncertainties of the day.  Would the weather hold?  Would we get on the plane today?  Would we land safely?  Would we make it back?  Our concerns gave way to excitement when we saw “Antarctica” listed on the big screen. 

 

Ten minutes later we got some bad news: the weather had deteriorated and the flight would not be leaving until at least 1 pm.  We settled in for a long day at the airport. 

 

Which left us too much time to think about what we were doing. . . . 

 

Most people don’t fear commercial air travel anymore.  Notwithstanding the occasional crash landing in the Hudson River, everyone agrees that flying is the safest way to travel.  But flights to Antarctica don’t have the same safeguards as normal commercial flights.  For one thing, the runway in Antarctica is made of gravel.  More importantly, there is no air control tower in Antarctica.  The pilot cannot rely on instrumentation on the ground that usually helps a pilot land a plane and instead must make a “visual landing.”

 

We had an unspoken agreement not to talk about the dangers of this trip.  What was the point of talking about it, right?  Not so fast. 

 

Erin became involved in a conversation with a woman from New York who was waiting for a flight to Santiago.  The woman was aghast wehn she found out that we were flying to Antarctica and we didn’t have a will.  Since she was a licensed attorney and Notary Public, she offered to notarize our will and send it to our parents in case the plane went down.

Mark politely declined.  Jeff ignored the woman.  Erin took a piece of scrap paper from her notebook and started to draft her last will and testament.  

  

Erin was scribbling madly when the announcement came — our flight to Antarctica was boarding.  She only had 7 minutes to get it all down.  We laugh every time we think about what was on that piece of paper.  One particularly memorable instruction: “Remainder of money in ‘trip abroad fund’ to be used for a party in our honor in Washington DC.  Brin and Melanie to host.” 

THE FLIGHT.  It was quite a scene as we walked out on the jetway to board the plane.  We found ourselves in a sea of Chinese scientists all dressed in matching red jumpsuits with “Antarctica” written in English and Chinese across the back.  We paused just before getting on the plane.  Antarctica here we come!

 

 

“In case of loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop,” the flight attendant said in Spanish and English.  Despite the absurdity of our destination, she gave her safety speech in the same monotone as if we were flying from Washington DC to Chicago.  Mark commented that this was the first time in about 15 years that he listened intently to every word of the safety lecture. 

 

 The flight from Punta Arenas to Antarctica was about 2 ½ hours.  It was a smooth flight.  We each made “Antarctica mixes” on our ipods and passed them around to fill the time.

 

Before we knew it, the landing gear lowered and we started our descent.  Erin’s heart almost leaped out of her chest when we bounced down on the gravel runway.   

 

 WELCOME TO ANTARCTICA!!!!!!

 

 

The normally staid Chinese scientists rushed excitedly down the stairs of the plane – their enthusiasm was contagious.  

 

 

 

We bounded down the stairs after them and started to explore.    

 

It wasn’t as cold as we expected.  In fact, it was 28 degrees Fahrenheit - a beautiful summer day in Antarctia.  It was colder in Madison, Wisconsin.

 

We were struck by how quiet Antarctica is.  Technically, Antarctica is a desert because it gets less than 10 inches of annual rainfall or precipitation per year.  There are no paved roads, no overhead power lines, and very few vehicles around to make noise.  It has no trees, no bushes, its largest land animal is an insect, and ninety-nine percent of Antarctica is covered with ice.  Execept for the gravel and dark rock at the end of the penninsula, there was a lot of white nothingness as far as the eye could see.

 

We walked past the Chilean, Russian and German scientific research stations on our way down to the sound.  There is no Antarctic government and no individual country owns the land.  In the early part of the 20th century, seven nations (Antarctica, Australia, Chile, France, Great Britain, New Zealand and Norway) all made territorial claims to parts of Antarctica.  In 1961, these nations and other signed the Antarctic Treaty, which put aside these territorial claims in the interests of international cooperation and scientific research.  Most of the buildings were very basic, with the notable exception of the Orthodox Church that the Russians built on a hill.

 

 

Since we were flying with a Chilean company, we were able to tour some of the structures on the Chilean research base.  Here is a picture of the gym, which we guessed was used more for soccer than for basketball.

 

Our Antarctica guide was Alejo Contreras Staeding.  Alejo had been to Antarctica more times than he could count, and he looked exactly like what we thought an Antarctica guide should look like.  His genuine enthusiasm for the adventure made us even more excited to be there.

 

 

Alejo gave us waterproof jumpsuits and we boarded a Zodiac boat.  “Weather conditions are ideal for a trip out to the Collins glacier,” he explained.  After 20 minutes we reached the vast Collins glacier.  Moving toward the glacier we started to hear a crackling sound under the boat.  “No need to be alarmed,” Alejo explained, “the Zodiac can withstand the glacial ice.” 

 

Alejo pulled the boat within 100 yards of the tremendous glacier and cut the boat’s engine.  Our brains worked overtime to process everything we were experiencing – we were in Antarctica, on a tiny Zodiac boat, staring at a wall of glacial ice 60 stories high.  This is freaking wild!!!

The next stop on our Antarctic tour was a penguin rookery.  After another 20 minutes on the boat we approached a beach filled with penguins and seals.  Alejo paused about 50 feet from the beach, and for a second it didn’t look like we were going to be able to dock the boat and walk among the penguins.  Our hearts sank.  Mark took it especially hard because he has a soft spot for penguins.  When Alejo turned the boat and headed straight for the dock, Mark’s face lit up like a kid in a candy store.

 

We saw two types of penguins in Antarctica (the Chinstrap penguin and the Gentoo penguin) and two different types of seals.  They didn’t seem to mind us walking around.

 

 

 

 

 Alejo was carefully monitoring the skies.  “The weather conditions are deteriorating.  We must return to the plane,” he announced suddenly.  

 

As quickly as we arrived, we found ourselves engaged in a mad rush to get back on the plane.  Alejo let out the throttle and the boat screamed back toward the Chilean base.  We boarded the plane and – before we knew it – our Antarctic adventure had come to end.

 

We spent an amazing day in Antarctica and, best of all, Erin finally got to visit her seventh and final continent.  It was the experience of a lifetime. 

 

Click HERE FOR MORE ANTARCTICA PHOTOS

 

They said the weather in Antarctica was “ominous” and our chances of leaving as scheduled were slim.  But the weather changes quickly in Antarctica, and so we were instructed to wait in our hotel and be ready to go within 15 minutes if the call came.

 

So we sat in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in Punta Arenas and we waited.  And waited.  And sent Jeff out to pick up some lunch.  And waited some more.

 

The best thing about waiting around all day was meeting an Israeli named Gad.  “It’s pronounced God,” he explained, “the other guy spells it differently.”  Gad was traveling through South America and came down to Punta Arenas for the opportunity to visit Antarctica.  There was only one problem: he had only one day left in his trip.  If we didn’t leave as scheduled then he’d miss out on Antarctica.

 

If we were going to be stuck in a hotel lobby with for seven hours, thank God we had Gad to keep us company.  He was a modern-day renaissance man and a wealth of knowledge on travel, architecture, gardening, and world affairs.  The man seemed to have about a million hobbies.  Oh, and his day job is building computer processors for Intel. 

 

We talked with Gad about everything — his extensive travels through India, his older son’s military service in the Israeli army, his visits to Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses in Wisconsin, and his favorite Israeli television commercials.  At 4 pm – after seven hours of hanging out and swapping stories – they officially cancelled the flight.  It was terrible news for Gad.  

 

We really enjoyed his company and so we spent the rest of the day with Gad.  We visited the Maritime Museum, had some coffee, and grabbed dinner.  Unfortunately, this exhibit in the Maritime Museum was the closest Gad got to Antarctica on his trip.

But Gad showed us that he is an adventurer in the truest sense of the word: he simply shrugged it off.  He told us not to worry — he’d make it to Antarctica some day.  We believed him.

For as long as she can remember, Erin has wanted to visit all seven continents.  This trip was her chance to visit the most elusive of all the continents: Antarctica.     

 

There are two ways to get to Antarctica: by boat and by plane.  For a boat trip, there are several companies that have converted scientific research boats into tour boats and run tours to Antarctica.  But these trips are very expensive and usually last about two weeks.  Jeff doesn´t do well on boats under good circumstances, and so he had no desire to spend two weeks on a boat across the Drake passage (famous for its rough waters) to get to Antarctica.  Besides, these boats have a tendency to hit icebergs and sink.  

 

 

 

The other option is to fly there.  Erin found a company called Victory Cruises that advertised a flight to Antarctica.  You fly out there in the morning, spend a few hours on the White Continent, and then fly back in the evening.  It was PERFECT!  

 

Unfortunately the flight was very expensive.  Because Jeff did not share Erin´s life-long dream of visiting Antarctica, he decided not to buy a ticket.  Instead, our friend Mark Waner (who shares Erin´s passion) said he would meet us in Argentina and fly with Erin to Antarctica. 

 

The folks at Victory Cruises told us that we needed to allocate five days in Punta Arenas, Chile.  The weather conditions needed to be perfect for the flight, and they said it was very possible the flight could be delayed several days due to weather. 

 

Just as Mark was set to join us in Argentina everything went haywire.  Exactly two weeks before the Antarctica flight, Erin received an email saying that the flight had been moved UP by one day.  This was a big problem because we had to change our travel plans (by boat, bus and plane) to get to Punta Arenas a day early.  Exactly nine days before Erin´s scheduled flight, and after Mark had already boarded a plane for Argentina, we got an email saying that the flight had been moved UP another day. 

 

Yes, you read that correctly - our flight was moved UP from January 24 to January 22.     

 

Erin was furious.  She spent the morning on the phone with the Victory Cruises people and the folks from DAP (the Chilean airline that owned the plane).  They explained that our flight had actually been cancelled, but that they were letting us hitch a ride to Antarctica on a plane chartered by the Chinese Government to transport 45 Chinese scientists to their research base in Antarctica.  Erin tried to get the company to reimburse us for the cost of the flight changes, but they balked. 

 

If they wouldn’t reimburse us for the cost of getting to Punta Arenas two days early, Erin reasoned that Jeff should get to travel for free to compensate us for the money and inconviences.  They AGREED! 

 

So on January 21st, all three of us (Erin, Jeff and Mark) arrived in Punta Arenas for our one-day roundtrip flight to Antactica on a Chilean plane chartered by the Chinese Government.