After literally years of waiting for this moment – dreaming, planning, having the rug pulled out from under me, planning some more – the Ocean Diamond was docked in the Port of Ushuaia, the gangway was down and it was time to GO TO ANTARCTICA! To be perfectly honest, I was almost afraid to believe it until the moment my feet were both on the gangway. (And even then, until we actually lifted anchor I was half afraid someone would appear at my elbow and say, “Excuse me, ma’am, there seems to be some mistake.”) But that didn’t happen – of course it didn’t – and Steve and I found ourselves on board, giddily exploring the ship as we waited to leave the harbor and strike out on our adventure.

First on the agenda was finding our cabin. We’d booked a twin window cabin and were up on the sixth deck, right by the lifeboats.

In retrospect, if I had it to do over again knowing everything I know now, I probably would have saved some money and gotten a porthole instead of a window. I figured we would want to have the window so we could keep a constant watch for whale tails, but we spent less time in our cabin than I expected. (That said, I did spot several spouts and whale tails out of this window so…)

I’ve never been on a cruise ship before (and an Antarctica cruise isn’t really like anything else…) so I found it fascinating that everything, literally everything, was bolted down. Not a surprise, just fascinating. And the expedition staff were very clear that we should secure all of our possessions in closets and drawers before going to bed at night, or things would fly around the cabin – especially while we were crossing the Drake Passage. I was very diligent about stowing everything, and even so, I had to get up in the middle of the night to reorient my suitcase, which was rolling around and smashing into the closet doors the first night. (I learned my lesson quickly – that was the first and last time I stowed my suitcase upright.)

After finding our room, we stopped by the lounge to pick up afternoon tea snacks to share, and then sat through our embarkation briefing – the first of many briefings we would attend over the next two weeks. All of the food was delicious, but the little slices of coconut cake were the star of the show.

Briefing done, we wandered around the ship some more. I really wanted to be on the stern to wave goodbye to Ushuaia. We found a spot to stand up on the seventh deck – the observation level – and checked out all the fun toys stacked up on deck six: about a dozen zodiacs and – exciting stuff here, people – the sea kayaks we’d be paddling in Antarctica!

As we stood looking out over the exciting adventure apparatus, the ship started moving almost imperceptibly at first, then picking up a little bit – the Port of Ushuaia started to recede, and we were officially underway!

Two adventurers ready to go!

The evening was devoted to exiting the Beagle Channel. We sailed past Puerto Williams, Chile (barely visible in the picture above, snuggled just below the saddle of two mountains) and passed another ship also headed south out of the Beagle. The first hours were smooth and uneventful – the Beagle Channel has its moments, but it’s nothing compared to the Drake and we lucked into quiet waters. We took advantage of the opportunity to wander around the decks some more, looking out for whales (hey, you never know) and other wildlife (someone saw a Magellanic penguin, but it wasn’t us!).

In fact, that’s largely what we did for the next two days. We lucked out with a decent crossing of the Drake – the waves were 14-18 feet at times and rolling, but I am not prone to motion sickness; Steve is but he wore Relief Bands and was fine. While I discovered that I don’t sleep much on boats, neither one of us got sick, which was fortunate because our sea days were packed with briefings – zodiac safety; gear checks with our kayak group; parka and muck boot fittings; wildlife lectures. We did find some time to test out our new Quark Expeditions parkas on the decks as we watched albatrosses and petrels swoop behind the ship.

These are two people who are ready for a big adventure!

Next week: we FINALLY arrive in Antarctica!