Antarctica and South America

We began our trip with a flight into Buenos Aires, Argentina on January 4, 2005. Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina and a very beautiful city (BA1, BA2). After a tour and an overnight, we flew to Iguaçu Falls on January 6 on the Argentine, Brazil border. These falls are spectacular (IF1, IF2, IF3, IF4, IF5, IF6, IF7, IF8, IF9). We spent a night and part of the next day and went back to Buenos Aires. On January 8, 2005, we flew south to Ushuaia, Argentina. This is the southern-most city in the world, situated at the tip of the Tierra del Fuego. We boarded the cruise ship, the Marco Polo at 8:00 pm that night and sailed south through the Beagle channel and the Drake passage toward the Antarctic Peninsula.

We arrived off the Antarctic Peninsula (Ant1, Ant2, Ant3, Ant4, Ant5, Ant6, Ant7, Ant8) and spent the next four days cruising south. We made 4 excursions off the Marco Polo to see Antarctica and the penguin colonies (pen1, pen2, pen3, pen4, pen5, pen6, pen7). We also saw penguins and whales swimming in the water off Antarctica (penguin, whale, seal) and a lazy seal resting on the ice.

The trip back was a bit rough. The wind was blowing at 115 kilometers per hour and the waves were 14 to 18 feet high, according to the captain. We still saw plenty of birds feeding in the wake of the ship. We spent the day of January 15 back at Ushuaia in the dock. I took a 4 hour hike through the forests and peat bogs of the Tierra Mayor valley in the Tierra del Fuego (TM1, TM2, TM3, TM4). The scenery was breathtaking. We also took a Catamaran trip to some islands in the Beagle channel a few miles from Ushuaia. There were thousands of cormorants nesting there and a few seals and sea lions living there also. We made our way back to the United States on January 17, 2005.

These pictures are copyrighted and are only for personal use unless prior permission is obtained from Jay Zimmerman at jzimmerman@towson.edu.