If you have never heard of the Drake Passage let me tell you first hand that they say it is the roughest stretch of ocean in the world for a reason.  I of course, have nothing really to compare it to but I can tell you that it can be brutal.

It is the body of water that is between South America and Antarctica, you have to travel out the Beagle Channel and cross the Drake Passage to get to Antarctica.  It connects the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and joins the Southern Ocean.  Try doing a YouTube search for the Drake Passage for a little taste of what we went through.  Honestly though, we all took lots of video and I hope that I can post my own.

It took us more than two full days to  cross the Drake Passage.  We left about 7 hours early and we got in about 12 hours later than our projected arrival time.  It was rough!!

The first day I managed to eat every meal but I spent most of the day sleeping. It was really a matter of not wanting to keep your head up for too long.  Crazy.  There were lots of lectures that we could attend.  I went to one about whales.  There were others that I wanted to attend but I just couldn’t keep my head up long enough to do anything.

Sleeping was an adventure as we never stopped pitching and rolling.  During the night we were holding on to the bed just to stay on the bed.  We were sliding back and forth and if you weren’t holding on you would slide back and forth on top of the mattress.  It was really crazy!  Amy and I were up in the middle of the night just laughing because that’s all you could do really.  It was so comical.  Things were flying around the room and rolling around on the floor.  At one point we both went to catch something that went flying and the boat pitched and we were on the floor laughing like crazy.   The ‘can’t catch your breath, holding on to your tummy, can’t stop laughing’, kind of laughter.  I still have a bruise on my knee – it doesn’t seem to be disappearing. We just tidied up the room at that point, there was no point in even attempting to sleep.

We had two days of this.  The second day we were asked to stay in our rooms for part of the day as it was too dangerous for us to be walking around.  They brought some food to our rooms and for lunch you could venture to the Discovery Lounge if you wanted to take the risk of walking around.  There were food & drinks available.

We did have dinner in the evening in the dining room, we had a lot of laughs about how rough it was – you really could only laugh about it.  I suppose if the Antarctic were easy to get to more people would do it.  It was definitely not for the faint of heart.  It was a little sad that it was our final evening together, we would be going our separate ways the following day.

We had a debriefing meeting in the evening to discuss disembarking the next day.  We were already behind the anticipated arrival time.  The crew let us known that this passage was the worst they had experienced this season. They informed us that some of the waves had reached 15 meters and that at one point our boat pitched 42 degrees!  Unbelievable really!  It was a violent, crazy, unpredictable journey but above all it was an unforgettable adventure!

I consider myself very fortunate to be one of the few who have been to Antarctica, it is an awe-inspiring adventure.