Veron’s Adventures

Whistler, BC, Canada

It’s been more than two months now since my last entry so I guess it’s time to stop being lazy and update my blog!

Last time I wrote I was in Buenos Aires, a city with good weather, great food and all of those things that support a superb lifestyle. But I have written about that kinda thing more than often enough, so let’s write about something else; POLO!

Where football is the sport of the Argentine people, Polo is the sport of the Argentine elite. It’s big and it’s the best. People from all over the world come to Argentina to get polo classes and to visit polo games, preferably those from the Campeonato Argentino Abierto de Polo, world’s most prestigious polo tournament, held every November in the centre of Buenos Aires.

Can you imagine a sportscomplex 10 times the area of a football field (a polo field is 300×160 yards) in the centre of New York, Paris or Amsterdam? Polo has enough status to stay on the most expensive ground of Argentina…

We watched the quarter final of the Campeonato Argentino de Polo (Argentine Open Polo Championship) together with 30.000 other spectators including a good amount of European and American polo fanatics that flew over to watch the game.

La Dolfina, the team in white only had players with the highest ranking (10). A polo team has 4 players and if I remember correctly there were only 13 players with a 10 ranking in the world at that time, of which 11 were Argentine.

Because polo is very intensive for the horses, a player uses about 4 of them every game and switches every 5 minutes or so.

If you’re ever around Buenos Aires in November, definitely go watch a game. It’s impressive to see those guys hit a small ball with a stick while riding a horse going like 40km/hour?

And the game isn’t even the best part. After the game there’s a big after-party in the stadium bars, sponsored and named after Dom Perignon, Moet&Chandon etc, where the rich and famous Portenos see and be seen. So don’t go home after the game and have a glass for cultural experience’s sake

After Buenos Aires I headed to Brazil for it’s beaches and world-famous New Year’s parties. We picked Florianopolis, a peninsula in the south of Brazil and that was an excellent choice. It’s the favorite New year’s vacation destination for the Brazilians from Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo and known as one of the best surf hotspots in Brazil. The place had a very relaxed beach vibe by day and was bumping at night with many parties in the clubs close to the beach. I’d love to go back some time to learn Portuguese.

Apartment view over Lagoa de Conceicao, the lake you see is very close to the sea that’s behind the mountains.

Praia Mole, one of Floripa’s most popular beaches.

We celebrated New Years at Reveillon Boutique, a huge tent build up at the beach. It’s nice to celebrate New Years with 25 degrees celsius, watching the sun come up in the early morning

I’m planning to blog some on the Olympics and skiing over here in BC, so keep an eye on the blog…

Hope you’re all doing well,

V.

The trip continues as we sail further south. Just before we’re about to enter the famous and feared Lemaire Channel, the 2nd captain allows me to take a quick look at the bow where the captains are navigating the ship around all the icebergs that are well hidden in the Antarctic waters.

The blue line is the course the ship is going to sail and all the yellow dots are icebergs! Also, it may be hard to see but the radar shows 64.19 degrees south!

All the hard navigational work has definitely been worth it since Lemaire channel was absolutely stunning…

 

The next landing was one a lot of people had been waiting for, Neko harbour. Or better; the first stop of this expedition on the Antarctic mainland, the 7th continent. No more small islands close to the Antarctic peninsula but the mysterious continent itself.

For this reason all kayakers decided to skip kayaking for the afternoon to spend all the time on the continent

First steps on the 7th continent. It was one of the few days that was a bit colder with about -5 celsius and some wind.

Since we were around early in the mating season there was a lot of penguin love to be seen…

After Neko Harbour we made a zodiac landing at Port Lockroy, a former research station that recently added a souvenir shop. Some of us, including me, decided to ban that part of the trip. We didnt come to the most remote place on earth to buy a penguin keycord after all…

The next day we stopped in the bay of Petermann Island. A beautiful and humongous space that was great for kayaking. After about an hour of peddling one of the group spotted a totally blue iceberg with his binoculars about 5km away. Since they’re very uncommon, the guide ”walkie talkied” a Zodiac driver so we could go and take a closer look to the thing…

It was really amazing to see such a deep blue piece of ice in the middle of a totally white world. The berg is so blue because it’s the oldest piece of ice from a glaciar. Due to all compression of younger layers of ice, the piece is full of oxygen and cleared from air. (atleast that’s what I’ve been told) Anyway, it looks great;

Vernadsky station. The Ukranian research station on Antarctica that discovered the hole in the ozon layer. It was a group of about 8 scientists that were all very happy to see people after having been totally isolated for about a year. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to live in Antarctica in the winter when it’s around -40 degrees celsius with a period of 24 hours of darkness, and only a couple male scientists around. We asked one of the guys how they handled it, he showed us their gym…

…..

On the last day before we had to return towards Ushuaia we started with a landing in Paradise Bay;

What can I say, it was another beautiful place and we once again had perfect weather, the trip could not have been better…

 

Our last kayaking expedition was at Cooverville Island, and the continent saved our coolest experience for last. After about 2 hours of kayaking a leopard seal came up in the water almost touching one of the kayakers. The guide demanded us to stay close to eachotherbecause even though the seal is just curious and playful, it remains a very dangerous predator (a leopard seal once killed somebody that was snorkling in a dry suit looking for penguins…)

The seal remained very active and about 5 minutes later it went on shore, attacked a penguin colony and was lucky enough to grab one. Now leopard seals don’t just kill a penguin and eat it. They go in the water and play with it while they slowly tear it apart. We saw the whole process from about 3 metres distance in our kayaks, it was absolutely mind-blowing;

If you don’t have a weak stomach then watch this VIDEO OF A LEOPARD SEAL EATING A PENGUIN

It felt like we were part of an episode on National Geographic Channel when we peddled back to the ship. We even saw 3 Minky whales doom up about 15 meteres in front of our kayaks, but since most of us used all battery or camera memory space for the seal, none of us managed to take pictures…

The 3 days to come were all about checking pictures and surviving the Drake Passage, which was rougher than on the way coming and brought me sea sickness for a full day, but it was all very very worth it.

I hope I inspired some of you to visit Antarctica because if you ever have the change, definitely GO!

Take care,

Veron