26 Feb

Day 4 – Drake Lake

Drake Lake or Drake Shake?  That was the question on all of our minds. 

Our bus guide the day before had told us she hoped we had Drake-Lakey, and not Drake-Shakey!

While not perfectly calm, we were closer to Lakey than Shakey!

I woke up a few times during the night and went right back to sleep. Mukta woke up at 9 and asked if I was okay. I had no idea what time it was!

Man, that felt good.  Rolling ships put me to sleep!

I got up and started getting ready.

Simon, the cruise director, came on the intercom, told us it was 37 degrees out, and confirmed this was Drake Lake! Woohoo!

While getting ready, I realized there was one flaw in our beautiful room. The room only had one plug, US or European, and it was in the living room. That’s not totally unusual for a cruise ship, and there were USBs all over, so I could make that work.

The flaw was that there was no mirror by the plug. Drying and curling hair without a mirror is not ideal!

But I loved our room so much I immediately forgave it.

After I finished getting ready, I walked around a little to take pictures. There was a lecture happening in the theater about expedition cruising, so it was fairly empty around the ship.

I sat in the Dome for a little while. These yellow chairs spin, which is so smart! You can face a group to talk, or spin around and look at the ocean!

So. smart.

Then I went down to get Mukta, and neither of us were feeling great, despite the relatively calm seas. We had some slow rolling going on, which just makes me want to go to sleep.

We decided to get out of the room and got a snack to see if that helped. It did a little, so then we went to lunch. We both had rice and were about to leave when our friends came in! And the server gave us ginger lemonade! It was all good from there.

Medicine, food, and distraction. That’s the key!

We also got to know our server at lunch and loved him!  We decided to sit in his section for every meal.  His name was Hieu Hop, and he was from Vietnam.  We called him Hop.

We talked to everyone for a while and then went to our room for a few minutes. Then, after that, we went up to the Dome and talked to some other guests until it was time for our gear fitting! It went great.   It’s a good setup down there, much like the Galapagos setup we had.

Then we went to vacuum off anything we were taking to land. Here is our location –

After that, we went upstairs for high tea!

Someone’s tea, not mine. I stand firmly with Ted Lasso in my anti-tea stance.

But I’m all for the snacks!

We saw our first iceberg and multiple whales! The cruise director came over the intercom and told us to take a picture of the iceberg. And then he said we would delete it the next day because we would see so many more so much closer than that one. Ha!

We talked for quite a while to Christophe, the expedition leader. He was super interesting!

Next up was our camping briefing. We were so excited about this! Stephen said I was crazy to pay more to sleep on ice (especially with a luxury ship right off the shore), but say the words “once in a lifetime” or “exclusive” to me, and I can’t resist.

We signed away our lives via the waiver and then went upstairs to play Name that Tune with Paul the Piano Guy!

We won stickers!

Next up was the nightly expedition meeting. We learned more about Antarctica and got even more excited.

Afterwards was the Captain’s Gala before dinner.

Jenn still had no clothes, but the store had a few things, and they got her some waterproof pants from lost and found! Plus they told her they could do laundry every day for free. Woohoo!

Dinner was excellent tonight. I had my normal Disney Cruise appetizer…

And another dinner in the black bowl.

Someone had risotto, which I do like!

I had a delicious souffle for dessert! Woohoo!

After dinner, we ran up to see the ice cream cart. It was self-serve and out in the freezing cold. And it was so cute! So we had some! Didn’t care that we were full.

Then we went back to the room and looked at tomorrow’s schedule. Here’s our schedule:

We were sooooo excited!! So many good things. Meet The Neighbors Hallway Party?!! What brilliance is this?

Trivia for teams of six? Made for us.

AND – we get an extra land expedition since we made it across so quickly! My word, we were lucky.

Bedtime! More to come!

Antarctica At Last – January 13-24, 2024
Day 1 – On My Way 
Day 2 – Beautiful Buenos Ares 
Day 3 – To the Ship
Day 4 – Drake Lake 
Day 5 – First Penguins
Day 6 – Two Landings! 
Day 7 – Penguins Again 
Day 8 – An Unintentional Polar Plunge and Camping on the Continent! 
Day 9 – To Plunge or Not to Plunge 
Day 10 – The Day I Did Nothing
Day 11 – Calm Waters Again
Day 12 – Ushuaia For the Day