Hi Karen & Hillary,
The entire trip was great and we enjoyed every minute of it. The Quark Expeditions is educational and fun filled trip with great staff. The cabins were excellent. The vegetarian food was delicious every day. The lectures were quite good and kept us very busy learning about the animals and plants and the geology of Antarctica. They showed us four parts ‘Shackleton’ at night followed by lectures on him and others who tried to reach South Pole. The end of the third day of sailing we reached Antarctic islands starting with Halfmoon Bay followed by Deception Islands. There were landings everyday for the next next five days, sometimes two times a day. One late landing was held at 10PM in broad sun light. After that and other days after the movie, people gathered around in the coffee/bar lounge until 2:30AM. It was near 24 hour day light and no one wanted to sleep. The expedition leader called out ‘good morning’ greetings in the morning from the bridge and I skipped many breakfasts, unable to wake up at 7AM. But we were all ready for 9:30 landing or lectures. The penguins were plenty, actually about 70 million strong and they smelled really bad.
We got to see four different kinds of penguins but not the big Emperor ones. They live deep south, not near the shore and their cycle of birth is opposite to the others’. But we saw a lot of seals and orca and hump back whales and birds such as albatross and skuas. One day Latha took a snap of sun going down in south at 12:15 AM and coming right back up a while later. It felt like a dream land or another planet, nothing so beautiful and untouched that we have seen before. The general consensus was we should see it at least once in our life time. All in all the expedition was excellent and you can easily book other customers on this trip.
We had good hotel rooms in Buenos Aires and Ushuaia and good reps who received us at Buenos Aires airport, Art hotel and Ushuaia ship peer.
We hated to be back!
Great memories and I am ready for the next!
Thank you for booking us on a ‘once in a life time’ expedition, it was worth it.
Srinath
Traveled to Antarctica December 2007/January 2008
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