Can’t believe the time is almost here! We are packed (mostly), we have our boarding passes, and are ready for our great adventure!
Tomorrow we will get on the plane and fly to Buenos Aires, arriving Sunday, with two stops along the way. Fingers crossed that we make all the connections….
On Monday morning we will be taking a Chartered Plane to Ushuaia, where we will board the Viking Polaris for our cruise to Antarctica. The Polaris is an amazing expedition ship, which we will share more about in a later post. Let me just emphasize that the ship has a SCIENCE LAB, where they do actual research! How cool is that?
Since we will be doing lots of flying and moving from place to place over the next few days, we are not sure when our next post will be, but we will sincerely try to post every day once we are on board our ship.
Here are some fun facts about Antarctica:
· Antarctica is a continent
· Antarctica is not owned or controlled by any one government, rather it operates under the Antarctic Treaty, signed by over 40 countries that agree to carry out only scientific and peaceful activities.
· It is the coldest, windiest, and driest continent, and 98% of it is covered by a thick layer of ice and snow.
· 10 countries have permanent research stations there.
· There is a fresh water lake the size of Lake Ontario buried under 4 kilometers of frozen water. Other fresh water lakes and rivers also exist deep under the ice.
· 200 million years ago, Antarctica was a lush woodland with dinosaurs roaming through them. Fossils have been found from 4 Antarctic dinosaur species.
· There is no Antarctic time zone.
· Antarctica has active volcanoes.
· Every way is north! If you stand at the South Pole, you are at the southernmost point on Earth. It doesn’t matter which way you look, every direction is north.
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