Jake's Travel Blog: Antarctica

Shortly after my last post, I started working in the tourism industry on an expedition vessel. My primary job was driving a zodaic to take passengers from the ship to our landing sites and taking passengers on zodiac cruises around icebergs, looking for whales, checking out historical sites and observing numerous wildlife in it's natural environment. Yes, I actually found a job where the most significant job experience I had was my teenage summers spent driving the water taxi at our family cottage! Unfortunately I didn't keep up with my blog during my adventures, but I did send an email home to friends and family mid-way through my season, which is posted here:

Things have been most enjoyable on this end of the Earth...all that time spent driving boats has certainly paid off with this job! I am now 5 weeks into my 3-month position on board an expedition ship bringing tourists to Antarctica, South Georgia & The Falkland Islands. If you´re interested, here´s a little more detail about how my time is spent...

We typically spend the first two or three days of a voyage at sea, much of that in the Drake Passage. After that, depending on the length of the trip, we spend a minimum of 4 days doing shore landings and zodiak cruises. During shore landings I am usually one of the three or four zodiak drivers that transport the 100 or so passengers to shore, 10 or 12 at a time in the zodiak. The odd time I am assigned another role, such as catching the boats when they arrive at shore. After everyone gets to shore, I am usually assigned a certain area to patrol, making sure passengers don´t wonder off too far or get too close to wildlife or historic buildings. Sometimes I am simply free to roam around, keeping my eyes on passengers, and listining out for any instructions given to me on the radio, such as returning to the beach to bring the first load of passengers back to the ship.

We also do a lot of Zodiak cruises, where we generally launch 8 or 9 zodiaks and take out everyone at once. There were some really cool moments on this last voyage, including seeing a large chunk of glacier ice come crashing into the water as we watched from zodiaks, which sent a fairly large wave our way that I had to motor away from, and later, head straight into. Another day we were on a whale watching zodiak cruise and, after having a couple fairly close encounters with humpback whales, we saw bubbles appearing all around our zodiak. I quickly recognized what was happening and fired up the engine to speed out of there. A few seconds later two large humpback whales surfaced directly where our boat was.

I am also responsible for running the on board gift shop, which I generally open once or twice a day as long as the daily excursions allow for it. Often times people just browse around and basically hang out, which can be a good opportunity for me to chat with them. I´ve got to know many intersting people this way; most of them very well travelled. It´s putting some good thoughts in my head for where I might travel to next!

My last voyage flew by, it was a lot shorter than the one before being only 8 days instead of 18, but still I can´t believe I´m back in port already. Half our team switched over before beginning this previous voyage, including the expedition leader. It was sad to loose team members who quickly became my friends on the first two voyages, but it´s great to meet new people with different experiences and qualities, and I figure it´s also good experience for me to work with as many different people (and management styles) as possible. I am enjoying working with the new team and we all get along great.

Our next voyage is called ¨Crossing the Circle.¨ It´s another trip to the Antarctic Peninsulla but this one is a bit longer, with 7 days of landings in Antarctica and 5 days spent at sea. Our passengers from the previous voyage disembarked the ship about 6 hours ago and our new passengers board in less than 2 hours. Not a whole lot of time in between, but all part of the fun!

Exploring Antarctica