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18 | THE COLONY NEWS | JANUARY 2023 | SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS By Kathy Sullivan You might have noticed that I love everywhere I travel. After a while, I start sounding hackneyed using the same amazing expressions again and again. But Antarctica was amazing. We spent many days on the boat sailing from Argentina to Antarctica. I wasn't on a big cruise ship, but one that originally was built as a Russian Research ship in the 80s and then converted to a "expedition" class cruise ship. Three days out of Argentina, we were in sight of the Falkland Islands. Our timing couldn't have been worse, as the weather was abominable – super high swells with hurricane force winds. Lots of rocking and rolling. Thank God I don't get seasick! With just a bit of clear weather, we made a two-hour stop at a small island with a huge albatross colony. The weather deteriorated fast, and I was on the last zodiac to go back to the ship. It was really scary sitting in a little zodiac with 30-foot swells all around, and really scary trying to tie the zodiac up to the big boat, and even more scary trying to make it up the gangway. Our next stop three days later was South Georgia Island, which is part of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. As goes the saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I beheld an amazing amount of beauty around those islands! Not only are they geographically overwhelming with huge glacier-ridden mountains, they are also home to millions of penguins and huge packs of elephant and fur seals. Historically, South Georgia is intriguing for being home to the wholesale slaughter of whales. From the early 1900s to the 1960s, 175,000 whales were killed for their blubber/oil. Ghost factories still stand on several islands. If you wish to read about courage, look up Ernest Shackleton and his ship Endurance. South Georgia Island is the home to king penguins, which after the emperor, are the second largest penguins. Their babies are covered in brown feathers and look like big puff balls. The penguins are even cuter in person; they have so much personality. Because there are so few visitors to the Antarctic, the animals are totally unafraid of humans. But they are not so cool and carefree with the monster male seals, who can weigh up to 8,000 lbs. each and be in a fighting mood during breeding season, which it was. After another three days of bad weather, we caught sight of our target, the continent of Antarctica, the home of the South Pole. We had two days on the land in Antarctica, most of it on surrounding islands where we could get out of the wind and heavy seas. We did land on the mainland, and I got to put my feet down on my seventh continent. Antarctica is an interesting mixture of areas totally covered with ice and glaciers, rough rock protrusions, islands, shelf ice, areas that have over 100,000 penguins, and waters full of whales and icebergs. The weather turned bad again so off we went, heading for Ushuaia, Argentina, the Drake Passage, Cape of Good Horn, Beagle Channel and the end of my 20-day Antarctica adventure. Even though the weather lost us many days on shore, it was still one of the greatest experiences of my life. Antarctica