Christmas 2008 found the family enjoying a great ski trip and when we returned home, I started getting the bug to go see Antarctica. We started looking at videos on Youtube and started searching the old favorites, Cruisecritic.com and Tripadvisor.com for ideas on how to get our feet onto the continent of Antarctica.
After viewing videos of the Drake Passage, the potential travelers were down to three of us and I contacted Quark Expeditions to see about booking a trip with them. They seemed to be the experts in polar travel, with multiple ships and itineraries to choose from.
This process brought us to March. At this point our travel crew dropped to two, my daughter and I. ( Our third traveler had decided to go to snowboard camp instead.) This was when we finalized our booking on Quark's Ocean Nova for December 10-21, 2009.
Through the summer, we continued to search the internet for information about the Antarctic and what we would need to bring with us on our expedition.
Over the summer, I upgraded my camera to a Nikon D90. I wanted to be able to take video without putting one camera away and taking another one out! It was far more efficient to be able to just press a few buttons and switch between stills and video. Another purchase that seemed to be needed when we added Iguazu Falls to our itinerary, was a waterproof camera. Olympus Stylus Tough seemed to do the trick, especially attractive when the salesman pointed out that it was built to withstand drops of up to six feet!
Also, as we looked into travel to the end of the earth, we added some stops to our itinerary. It was decided to spend two nights in Buenos Aires to deal with travel fatigue and any possibly lagging luggage. On Trip Advisor, I also started reading about Iguazu Falls - a seemingly amazing natural wonder of the world that I had never heard of. Two more nights were added to go explore Iguazu.
Booking airfare seemed a bit of a puzzle, so I ended up booking through Quark's airdesk. That seemed to work well, most of the airport fees were taken care of which saved us stops while passing through the Argentinian air terminals. ( we did have to pay the exit tax at Ushuaia, but it was quite easy to do.) We also had a number that we could call in case of any problems while flying, which made me feel more comfortable as I would be traveling alone with my daughter.(Fortunately, I never had to avail myself of this help desk, so no idea how they worked!)
Finally, as the departure date approached, I used Quark's airdesk to book a few tours and transfers for the journey. A scramble in November to make sure all was paid for and then it was just a matter of waiting for December 3rd to arrive and figuring out what to pack!
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