Antarctica Diving by Cathy de Lara
Part 1: London to the Falkland Islands
Having packed all the dive kit we thought we would need, we found ourselves at Heathrow airport, complete with 80 kg of luggage (that’s between us, not each!) some 16 hours and 1 stop in Rio later, we found ourselves in Buenos Aires. Having packed all our cold weather clothes, Buenos Aires was a toasty 30c. We spent 2 days in the city, seeing the sights, enjoying the BBQs, drinking wine and watching Tango. Then it was another flight down to Ushuaia, the end of the world and the capital of the Malvinas (apparently!) Here we spent another couple of days, we met up with Pete from Vobster in the Irish bar and took the train at the end of the world to Tierra del Fuego.
On the morning of 20th feb we dropped our luggage off and spent the day in the town before boarding our ship “Hondius”. There is a wide variety of ships operating out of Ushuaia, but we chose Hondius as having been on board before, we were keen to sail on her again. That evening we set sail for the Falkland Islands. It took over a day to get there but that gave us plenty of time to assemble our kit, meet the other 5 divers on the trip, the 4 dive guides, and see our first Albatross.
Our first stop was New Island, this is where we did our check dive. The dive itself wasn’t amazing, mostly small stuff (starfish and crabs) and kelp (proper kelp forests not the annoying stuff we get here!) But how many check dives are next to a penguin colony with dolphins playing with the boats? Not a bad start! After the dive we went for a walk on the island where we saw penguins, albatross chicks and Cara Cara birds. The afternoon was similar to the morning, a dive in a kelp forest with sea urchins, abalone and nudibranchs followed by more penguins, geese and shags.
The following day we visited Port Stanley, a very British town, complete with red phone boxes, so we went to the pub!
That afternoon we set sail for South Georgia, a 2-day voyage with lots of interesting lectures, more Albatross, Orcas and our first Biosecurity checks. This is where they check all your outdoor clothing/boots/bags etc for any form of biohazard including soil and seeds. They are determined to keep out all potential invasive species.
