Here's the thing, I read the book, "Where Did You Go, Bernadette?" by Maria Semple and became extremely aware of the potential for the Drake Passage to be awful. In fact, I took the book to my doctor and read off the list of medications that Bernadette had gotten for the trip, so that I could be just as prepared as my fictitious counterpart. Almost every one of the guests on board the ship had a small bit of trepidation towards the possible conditions of the Drake Passage. A few even asked in murmured tones, "Have you seen the videos on Youtube? Terrifying." Everyone knew that to survive the Drake Passage is truly a badge of honor.
Lucky for all of us on board, we were met by the "Drake Lake," so calm, I'm unsure anyone really suffered from seasickness. Of course, I still wore my Dramamine Patch...which led to some major dozing during lectures about sea conditions, navigation and Antarctic Wildlife, which was a shame because what I was able to listen to I found fascinating. It took us two days to cross the 600 miles of the passage and somewhere along the line, we saw our first iceberg. And then we saw our first tabular iceberg, it was about 2 days in around 11pm, we were all slap-happy and so excited, many of us took photos in front of it. Little did we know, that was the first of so many incredible scenes we would encounter over the next few days.
This photo was taken sometime after 11pm, when we were passing a tabular iceberg. Since we were heading to Antarctica at the bottom of the southern hemisphere, the sun would kind of set very late every night, and then rise a few hours later. We never saw a dark night sky, only dusk...so unfortunately, I cannot say what the stars look like in Antarctica.