MS National Geographic Endeavour
Beagle Channel
Sunday, January 18, 2009

    We have been sailing for about seven hours now, having embarked in Ushuaia, Argentina, late this afternoon. The skies have been overcast all day; not unusual for this part of the world. As they say, the sky is cloudy in Ushuaia, except when its not.

    The morning started with an early 05:15 wake-up in Santiago, Chile, followed by breakfast at 05:45 to allow for a 06:15 departure for the airport. We had a chartered LAN Airbus A319 waiting to fly us to Ushuaia; about 1600 miles, and taking just over four hours. We flew with a cloud undercast the whole way, but managed occasional glimpses of the snow-covered Andes below our flight path. Tierra del Fuego (Patagonia) is a beautiful place; high sharp mountains with patchy snow, with long, deep round-bottomed valleys formed by ancient glaciers. There is a distinctly visible tree line on the mountains that separates the peaks from the Patagonian forest below. With only about 68 cm (27 inches) of rainfall annually, you wouldn’t expect such a lush forest made up of South American beeches (both deciduous and evergreen). The key is that there is almost not evaporation. Sixty-eight cm of rain isn’t much for a forested area, but having grown up in the Mojave desert of southern California, it is three or four times what I am used to experiencing.

    We were able to learn about and view the landscape during a bus ride through the Patagonian National Park. At the end of the bus ride, we embarked on a catamaran to sail back to Ushuaia via the Beagle Channel while enjoying the view and lunch. We sailed up close to two islands in the channel to photograph blue-eyed cormorants at one, and seals at the second. It was a great way to get the adrenalin pouring into our systems for the sights to come.

    Less than an hour after boarding Endeavour, we set sail under the guidance of a channel pilot who stayed on board for about the first five hours. After that, a pilot boat showed up along side and the pilot quickly transferred off the ship. Thirty minutes after we left the dock, we had our first emergency drill. We have four lifeboats, each with a capacity of 55 souls. That should cover the approximately 150 guests and crew aboard.

    It finally is starting to get dark now at 22:50 (Argentine time) and we should be breaking out of the Beagle Channel and into open sea within the next hour or so. It will be interesting to see what the Drake Passage holds for us this trip.

    I am wide awake still, so I think I will transfer today’s photographs to the computer and then try to force myself to get some sleep. I want to be up early tomorrow morning – our first full day at sea. The naturalists and photographers have several seminars and help sessions planned for tomorrow. I quickly found and befriended Tim Laman, the National Geographic contributing photographer on board. This is his first trip to Antarctica so he too is very excited. He will also be making the next voyage on Endeavour. I first met Tim at the Santiago airport when we arrived yesterday. It just happened that we were the first two to get to the group waiting area for the ride to the hotel. At the mixer at the hotel in the evening, we had an opportunity to “talk shop”. He has shot some Nikon (mainly underwater), but is a Canon user. He is interested to sit down with me to check out the D700 and D3X, though, because a number of passengers have new Nikon DSLR’s and part of his job is to be able to help them learn and get the most out of their cameras.

    I met Bob Smith, the other staff photographer, on board this evening. He, too, seems to be a great guy, a Nikon user, and I look forward to many conversations with him. This is the last of three consecutive trips on Endeavour that he is making this season.