Visiting the Antarctic is quite a bit more complicated than your typical Caribbean cruise. The ship has to operate far from any support infrastructure; and there's no one to call if something breaks. The itinerary crosses the worst seas in the world, wanders down scenic but treacherous ice-filled channels, dodges icebergs the size of the large buildings. The weather is bizarre, unpredictable, and often extremely foggy or windy. In Ushuaia, the ship took on an “ice pilot” in addition to the regular captain. The stops we made were very weather/ice dependent – it made for a very spur of the moment schedule—we missed several places on the itinerary, and stopped at some that weren't listed.

Each passenger is issued a bright red parka, but we were responsible for bringing our own “wellies” – knee high rubber boots for wet landings and traversing penguin rookery guano. With the unpredictable weather, the trick was to dress in several layers, adding and removing them as needed. It was quite the production.

We were taken to shore in zodiacs that held about a dozen people. With nearly six hundred people onboard, this obviously took a while, even using all five zodiacs. There were restrictions on the number of people (100) who were allowed onshore at one time at the rookeries. We were divided into six groups by colored disk (attached to our parka - top left photo below); these groups were staged over the course of a day for the visit ashore and the color order varied to try to make it fair to each group.

Once your “color” was on deck, it was time to do the elaborate multi-layered dressing. Then we waited for the call they were ready to process the “greens” (our color) and we went to the show lounge, where we were assigned by chit to a particular zodiac. When our turn came, we were called downstairs, where we were fitted with a life jacket, then herded from a precarious floating dock onto the zodiac. It made for a lot of waiting around, and a lot of overheating. While we didn't like the waiting around, the process was run as efficiently as one could expect, particularly given the stringent safety requirements, and the occasional"special handling" required required for some of the more frail passengers.

It was usually a quick 10 minute ride to shore. Once onshore, we were told what time we had to return, and were left on our own to explore the area (as cordoned off by the penguin police). Before getting on the return zodiac, we were subject to a boot scrub to remove the ever-present penguin guano.

Waiting for the "Green Dot" set to be called	Haute fashion life jackets
Down the gangway to the zodiac	Sardines on the way to see sea birds
	Boot cleaning because we known what penguin guano smells like