Why you should think twice about going to Antarctica

December 26, 2010 Dustin Main

A few days before I left for the Antarctic from Ushuaia, a video came across my twitter stream. I spread it out with my thoughts at the time.

Here's the video to check for yourself. It's a boat called the Clelia II getting tossed around in the Drake Passage on December 7th after it lost power when a wave came over and busted a window on the bridge and doused some of the equipment in sea water.

A US-operated Antarctic cruise ship with 160 people aboard has lost an engine in high seas, but is limping safely to its scheduled port. The Argentine Navy said the Clelia II declared an emergency on Tuesday, reporting it had lost an engine amid heavy seas and 55 miles per hour (90 km per hour) winds.

So the deal was that the ship lost it's main power, and probably it's stabilizers. I'm not too sure, I'm not a boat person. Anyways, you can see it looks like a bathtub toy, and I can imagine the ship smelled a little like something that rhymes with "tarf". The ship was sitting in dock in Ushuaia right across from the boat I was on, the MS Expedition. The company took the flag off the ship at the time (could you get worse press?), but we all took pictures anyways.

A trip to Antarctica isn't for the faint of heart, in 2007 a boat sank after hitting an iceberg, and the Clelia II (from the video above) had some propeller issues just last year. You can read about these on the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) website.

In my next post, I'll show you a few reasons why you SHOULD go to Antarctica. Honestly, it's amazing... even if the Drake Passage makes you hurl...