Picture of the week
22nd February 2009 and we had finally arrived back in Ushuaia after a 4 night crossing of the Drake Passage from below the Antarctic circle. We were on a different ship having been rescued from the grounded Ocean Nova after a 36 hour wait for help that at one point was truely scary. Stuck on rocks with the ship tilting at an angle with hurricaine force winds howling round the ship.
This is the scene the morning of us arriving back in port, altogether more serene and no hint of the adventure we’d had. Thanks to Karl McGowan for allowing the use of the picture, I don’t have any from when the holiday went slightly wrong onwards.
Like this:
Antarctica in the news (sort of)
I can’t have been paying attention to the news recently as it was only by chance I happened on these articles and usually anything about antarctica jumps out at me. Luckily it sounds like the passengers and crew on both ships have got by relatively unscathed, but I guess it’s only a matter of time before Antarctica claims tourist lives. Stunningly beautiful it may be but from experience it’s not a nice place to be when something goes wrong.
Links:
- Antarctic Tourist Ship Foundering in Drake Passage from December 2010 (update – along with some slightly scary looking youtube footage of the ship)
- CNN article about the MV Polar Star and the IAATO update February 2011
update with a couple more links:
looks like the Clelia II managed to get in to trouble twice last year, see the article at the bottom of the page. It would seem I also missed the news last summer that the Clipper Adventurer that we transferred to after the ship we were on, the Ocean Nova, also ran aground in August 2010.
What that says about the Arctic/Antarctic tourist industry I’m not sure.
RPDL of the week
It was a year ago this week that I was to be found nervously/excitedly heading out of the country down to the bottom of the world for a voyage down the Antarctic Penninsula. The antarctic has to be one of the most wonderful places in the world. After 30 hours of travelling we arrived at our departure point. Ushuaia, at the southern most tip of South America.
