Antartica

0:00 Hello and welcome back to another episode of a record of my father. We apologize. Because we've been away during this holiday season, but now we're back and we're ready to rumble. We've dealt with some illness and some extensive travel, which we're actually about to go into on this special episode about Antarctica, our recent Adventure. What do you have to say about the cold place down there? Oh my gosh, too many things. A lot of really, really, really great times. I kind of miss this, I miss the banter back and forth. I have to say that jump in here for a moment and say it's this this is something I really enjoy to just go over, but the trip to Antarctica was one of those, you know, once-in-a-lifetime things that you think about.

0:49 We had booked it originally last October it got canceled boy, did it like even before that right was, that's for sure you're done. First, I wasn't Years in the making of it was two years ago. Three years ago, we started to talk about it. Two years ago, we actually booked it. Last October, we were a month away from it to happen and they got canceled. Yeah. And then what happened. It went from it that got canceled by rebooked again. That was Encore Kyrie book to get on Silver C's, which is supposed to happen. December like 23rd or 24th and we're going to come A home on the second or something.

1:31 Really cool like that. We're going to be a New Year's New Year's Eve. You're going to be popping champagne and the bottom of the world. Well, the day we were supposed to go two hours before we got on the flight. Yeah, hey Hwang, go bang go, good night. Oh, they kicked us out and said f off well, but to Silver sees credit. They gave us a free Cruise anywhere in the world for 12 days and we took them up on that. Yeah, it was a summer. They paid for everything, but we went to co-op coast and we'll probably talk about that. I think that's a good another episode. It's yeah, yeah. So let's not tell anybody though. They don't tell anybody about that was, it was great time secret episode, but but any wedding down there. Yeah, the amount of flights always he was three flights. One of Miami, Miami to Santiago Santiago to point out Arenas. And then another one did George is, I was four. Yeah, South Georgia, South River dries. It was called South Georgia, Georgia, South Georgia, Island, Georgia, right?

2:28 And we went to The Fray. Station, which was the Chile Chilean. Air Base was an old Chilean Air Base but evidently it was real secure and all those kind of stuff. So you weren't supposed to take pictures or video or any crap like that. So of course we did. But we were sort of surreptitious, you know. It's like when you go in the Vatican and take the picture of the Sistine Chapel ceiling or not supposed to and you're like, yeah, Greece has that too. But like a parking lot, I pay taxes. Maybe not here. But I do in general. Would hope that that would suffice. Yeah. There you go. I mean the overall I have to come back to this.

3:09 At the end, is that it was we hit so many things. I've never seen a whale before, I mean on TV. Yeah. But I'd never seen one in a while. We'd never I mean, the exhilaration that you got when you were sitting in the boat and we were in a, what a 14 foot 12? Foot kayak, though in the kayak to person 1 and you have a whale that pops out of the water like 10 feet from you. Yeah. Now it wasn't 10. It was like 10 or 15 years like 39. I was like 10 or 15. Okay, I'm teaching you how to lie. I probably hos online. You're just the guy that measures things with football field.

3:54 Calls me a liar. How far away was there anything? Well it was about is about a quarter of a football field nonsensical measurements. I remember that we were writing and somebody said how far away is it I said, oh, it's about a football field and a half and he look at me, like, are you the stupidest fuck? Call me her, they look to you. Like, what are you talking about? Ya know exactly what I was talking about. They didn't. Okay, I should have said I should have said football pit but it wasn't about that. It's about a football field and a half two there and then four and a half, football fields back all the way to the parking lot and they were like what like what is that mean, but this is 200 yards to that place. So they were looking at you or 150 yards to the bacon. There's yeah, like you measure things in Coors Light cans or something like the same form of measurement, maybe that's, that's kind of a cool idea.

4:47 Because what I have to do is I need the chords like the football field quotient. Yeah, the ratio or The ratio so we can figure out like, how many Coors cans. Of course, like cans are there in a meter, probably a lot like the where did we go? First brings back? Trying to keep me on topical back. Yeah, the seven-year-old is going off at me seven and a half today. Yeah. That when we talked about the trip down or did we said we went to Miami. Yeah Santiago terrenas which is the very what Puntarenas is a at one point. Said it was the farthest point, south and Chile. There's one more now than it's on the Straits of Magellan are so far now. But yushka.

5:33 Oh yeah. It's like you should get her something. That's a you. She goes farther south. I believe still chilly. Yeah, it still is chilly the book chili. It's not the Argentina tip or I think it is Argentina. It's maybe it's Argentina. Maybe that was the whole the whole issue. But it was like, what? Now I saw and we get to Point the rain has and we're supposed to sleep overnight there. Air and then go the next morning and they're like, nope, whether it's going to suck tomorrow, get on the plane now. So we got on the plane then afternoon. Like, as we landed in the morning, remember, I do remember and we popped and we, and we get on the plane and you fly over, and they're like, put all your stuff on before you get off. And was, which was kind of silly because the weather was like, 35, 40 degrees 35 to 45 hours a day at night. It was little bit colder, but it was still. Yeah, but the sun was up for most the day, any Yeah. Yeah, rentals are like 20 times.

6:26 Yeah. It was light all the time because it was sort of like It was like what it is that around as the sun's going down right at the Horizon. That's what it was all the time. But no it's more like in the morning before it rises because you couldn't see the Sun. So it's got that kind of light Darkness out there. Yeah. Messes with yeah. It's like going to Iceland or something there in the winter. When it's our, I guess it's the opposite of that. But we got to the base. We boarded the cork machine, which is really cool. What is it the adventure or something like that? The ocean adventure, I think lotion. Adventury, right. Yeah. And then we immediately that evening took off and I think it was eight hours, 7 hours, whatever to the Lemaire channel is the first place, right?

7:10 And that was the farthest point that we were going to go to was Lemaire Channel. Those really special? Yeah, we basically got it another day on top of it. Because yeah so quickly that because on the front end we got another day. Yeah. So we get there and then was it rough on the way. It was rough past Lemaire Channel. I forgot what the the ocean that we cry out the ocean but the area. Yeah, and I think you hit the same thing coming back where we had like the 45-degree. Sway it 4:30 in the morning when he woke us up and it's like holy shit, you know? But we went to the mayor Channel and it was We had signed up for kayak and I would say, if you go, you need to sign up for kayak, but obviously, it's an experience to get on the water and I mean, I know doing a zodiac is really cool and you got it, you don't have to really be strong there. You know, they were and I'm sure most of the other people sort of play, it too old fat people like me were you know, you get the kayak and they kind of and most of the people that are old and well, zodiac.

8:17 As well as just a tugboat was like, an engine on the back. Yeah, but it's It gives you the the ability to see all sorts of stuff, far away, more than you would in competency far away up close. All right, exactly whatever the hell that thing, it does that make sense? We got really lucky with the weather, to the weather was just glad. He's like, you would go out there on the kayak. It would just be glass. Yeah, and they were, they were in. Yeah, because my biggest freak out going there with sign of her kayak is gems. Like I've no do them, do I shouldn't. And when we did ocean kayaking you and I did like Ten years ago in the Galapagos that was awful. The waves were like they were about a foot and a half.

8:59 Yeah, I remember that, which, which is not that much, but if you can, if you're not, if you don't know what the hell you're doing, and you go the wrong way, that's that's huge. So we they were open to in the Galapagos these women were close. These were close. We had a skirt, we had a full dry suit. You know, you had the whole scope e thing over your head and all that kind of happy horseshit. Yeah. And everything was rubberized, and they're just like, hey, if your kayak flips over, you just got to get out. If you want to live. You'll be fine, though. I mean, you're, in a dry suit anyway. Yeah, it's like, yeah, you wouldn't really be that cold. This is your well, I think the waters in the 40s and if you put your body in there for any length of time, you might suffer something.

9:41 But for what we had people like jump off the Polar Plunge. Yeah they did Polar Plunge. Yeah I was not interested in then I do not regret that to this day. Regret it me neither. I do that in the pool. I do it in the pool and December. I do. I do it in the pool in March when it opens. Yeah. And I probably do it a lot of times, so but I guess maybe I could have, would have should or whatever, but with, but but it was like when we did that first thing, it was so funny because we were I was with I was the one of the Buddies as with and he was he was a steer and we were going to round and he was having some trouble. And I was having some trouble.

10:23 The first time we got in the car. Yeah. But it was so cool because we were going through literally Sea of Ice. It was, I've never seen that much ice and gone through it, and you're using a paddle to, and it's hitting your kayak and the water and you see like a little piece of ice on the top. But it's like it's a a foot in diameter, you know? I mean you see the surface is a foot by two foot by the actual Iceberg. So weird. All right and And it's like three feet under the water. Let's create an usually boil. Unhittable boom, boom! Boom, you know that was just just wow and and that was the first day, you know? And I'm just thinking like oh my God, I got the kayak on glass, I was scared to death coming on the kayak. I thought we were going to drowned and and to add that to it.

11:16 Thirty days before they'd had a rogue wave kill three people. Yeah. And also the landing strip too much people died in the plane crash or something. Oh it's so yeah. That was a week before we went there. Oh I didn't I didn't know about the ladies so I and I'm glad I did I think somebody hit somebody with a plane or something what's a very short landing strip and sure yeah yeah and you got to stop really fast and they don't have instruments. They land by sight. Right exactly so when the rear end of the trip we got stuck there but we won't go there. I mean I don't want to talk about the rear and yet let's talk about some of the other things we did. For the Lemaire channel, is the second day after the Lemaire channel was Danko Island.

12:00 Right? Was Nicko, or Flanders by now, it was finders Bay, right? Find ourselves, the on the second day and that was cold. It was raining. That was the cold rainy Sea of Ice and I, and that was what I expected. Was he credibly See whether the but still you're in a full dry suit, you got all your, you got all your long underwear underneath. And so, the only thing I cold for me was the hands and I had, I had these, I was wearing ski, got ya ski goggles, so that, and you're, and you're like chin. Yeah. My face was freezing. Your face is freezing and you're in the tips of your fingers, because I had those a gator on, like, a neck gaiter. Yeah, but it was for a child, so it only looked like mine. But the the beginning of my channel. So you think it's time to get a baby might be time. I think that one was that I had like four of a man I had all these Gators and all this other crap that we had for when you were a kid I was like I just brought all that crap. I gotta put that all but that all think I'm still wearing mom's ski pants from like 2009 or something. But the day after that was it wasn't the chinstrap Penguins. It wasn't that day, was it?

13:11 Now, the emperor penguin was the last day using her point. Was it the next note? Next to last. And user point was the next one that we missed. And write that day. We missed that we missed that had to get up at like 6:00. Yeah, really. Yeah, we don't want to make snow angels today, I guess. No, we missed that. And then then we went to one point and that's where we saw might have been Nico Island and that was where we climbed Nico islands, where we climbed the medicine steps, right? It was about 5050, 200. Yeah, you get to the top of that little hairless. Thing was, is there's all these penguin roads and they're walking up and down in groups of four and five and they hold their wings back and they waddle.

13:55 And it's just the most comical thing that you can see is to watch Penguins do this. And they all make these funny noises. We land and we're walking up the steps because they cut steps into the wall. Yeah. And there's three penguins lay in there. You're like, you're not supposed to touch them. One thing I would say that they were incredible about they washed us, Cleaned our stuff for we got on the boat the disinfected it. When we got on the craft, they disinfect your boots, they just before. And after yeah, you're not allowed to sit on any Island. If there's any Wildlife at all. That's there, which is all the islands. So, last untouched area. It's the last untouched areas. So if you sit, they wash you. When you come back on of all your because you don't want to what you don't want to do.

14:42 Is you want to bring something or you don't want to send something. They're mean, I was sitting there one of the dinners, the food sucked, but I was at one of the dinners and the guy was saying that they found a plastic bottle. Yeah, I remember that. And they were telling a story and I like yeah we were trying to find the origin of the plastic bottle to see how it got here because we don't have those and it was like this big deal and you're like, what have like? No this is like this is, this is it, this is the clean. Place and there's the in Arctic agreement to between. I think it's three or four different countries to oh, it's more than that, it was many.

15:22 It's like 6 to 10. It wasn't that many. It was like, I thought they were a bunch of them will bitter. It's a it's a gentleman gentle persons agreement. It's not a it's not just like it's not it's not enforceable. So if you want to hop on a plane go down there, set up a tent and spoil the area you can do it. Yeah. But your Violet, you're not violated. There's not a law down there that says, your pilate. What I like too is that if you're more than, I think, it's 250 know, it's if it's more than 150 passengers on a boat, they cannot set foot on land. They can only go out and like the zodiacs. Let me know Zodiacs can't, which is completely fair in my mind like it.

16:07 Yeah, I feel like that should be very similar for the Galapagos. I would hope that the Galapagos how you would, you would want. I think it's going to happen at some point there. I don't know if gotten the same amount of that's more touristy, it's more. Well, I remember we went it was sort of like, Yeah, when we went, it's sort of a little different, you know? Yeah, no. We went to the clock goes. We went to nine Islands on, well, because it was a bigger door than what we did in 2010. Yeah, it's a lot bigger tour, but they were, they were cleaner and all that, but but the other one we saw a lot more, but we'll go back to that. Anyway, the the after we hide it to the top of that. Well, before we hired that, let me go back, Okay, yeah the first night there I'm I was a will virgin I'd never seen a whale so I mean never seen a whale in the wild and they had this thing like they had the bar open and we went to the bar and it's light out so it's like you get no queue for when you're go supposed to go to bed you know, when it gets dark other than a clock.

17:17 Yeah yeah. But I don't I don't use that. Newfangled technology. Don't know what that is. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not into that kind of sundial in my pocket but we were there until they said time for you to go home and and that was it 12:53. I walked out on the deck. And I have a, I have a video of this whale that pops up. And that noise when they do it. And these are mostly, I think almost all the ones we saw were humpback. Whales every single one, it was, it was so cool because you're and that's when they told me and then he Dives And then I started yelling at the whale come back, come back, you gotta show yourself again.

18:05 I call him names and then he pops up again. He was and then I think somebody next to me goes oh it's the will whisper because he came back and I had it on very. It was just for me, it was sort of like, wow, that's a moment. My life I'll never forget. Even though we started drinking it like 6:00 and here, it was 1:00 in the morning or to do other things on a boat. Yeah. Really it? What is? I mean, that's a thing. I know the very end. I love the what Jim did with organizing exercise classes, but oh yeah, use facilitating the exercise. Let me know. Now is really good. That was good. That was very cool. But there's a, we want to g bay after that. And saw 30-plus probably come back whales in this little Bay that they were feeding on the upwelling phytoplankton.

18:51 They were coming down. I mean, that's the picture. I want to use, not the map. I want to use that picture because I think we were sitting there. Across it's 5:30 in the afternoon. If that is like the sun, is it? 45 degrees, Bright, Beautiful, Blue Sky, glass water. And we were only supposed to be there for like, two hours and we sat in our kayaks for Polly for, and it was just whales everywhere. And in one in this, where we learned about the whales, like, what they do, they the humpback, whales dive and they dive the, I mean, the bays are You know, thousand feet.

19:32 You think it's thousands? My probably not beside. It was like two to three hundred, I see they dive down to the bottom. And then they swirl on the way up because what they're the reason they came into Grand Bay is because there was a ton of krill in the 11th girl done by Deloitte. And and so in phytoplankton and what they do is they swim around in a circle to you. You can actually look at the water and you'll see like this, what do you call them? What is it when the water goes around in circles like Cyclone or something? But it's like, wow. Cyclone. But what is it on a water? It's a Whirlpool looks like a little whirlpool and you start to see that on the surface that's where the whale is going to come out of the water. So if you're in the middle of it, get the fuck out of the way.

20:14 But we were like 20 30 feet from these over and over and over or you know a third of a football field and all over the place and you see the first one. You see the second one. You see the third one and it was just it was it was just crazy. Crazy to see that many and even the staff were like we never seen this in a lot of those people had been working in that area in Antarctica for eight years. Yeah and that was the same with the case. The next day when we saw the emperor penguin, the singular nose to lose, do a penguin's, a mom and a baby. Yeah, they were like about 300 to 500 miles away from where they usually a nest because you need to go in need to walk Inland and that's how they called it a lost.

20:59 Penguin, you see all that fluid. Bitch. Yeah, of the, the march of the Penguins and that's three to five hundred miles in word. Yeah. You see that you're like here they are. And that's on the literally other side of the NRA. That's the one over by Australia. We were the one over by South America. We really going to North right. Yeah well no it's like what it is is Australia's over here which they did the second and we you can get to an ARCA there but that's on the other side. And then and so the cool I mean, what's the What did you learn about penguins? What did I learn about penguins? I mean, the funny, the, the emperor penguins don't come to that area at all. It's my only chance for app. And then like the the other Penguins, there's three there's chin strap and two others that we forgotten because it's, you know, we're really education zoologists Des, Des, Des until disinclined or whatever is the chin, strap is really cool.

21:48 Yeah, because they had this little chin strap beard on them. They all smell so bad. We'll do. That's the one thing that I noticed that night. 95% of the Penguins we saw were covered in Pope. Yeah. And they live in the other he won warm. And you would see the pet when we went to the last place and climb the mountains that was the coolest. We did we climb to the top and it may be on the circle. As I were talking about, like this track area where the chin straps were, they made tracks where they walked and they were all Brown from where all the Penguins had crap walking up and down the tracks. And so they were just constantly walking through this and you just see them and you're just like, oh, this is the Yeah, it's the poop Trail. You follow poop Trail to the top but then you see a penguin. In one of the things you do is you're supposed to say six feet. Six to ten.

22:38 I think six ten feet away because we were like you're really conscious of, you know, what they're going to do, where they're going to go and all that kind of stuff like that. And they don't even, they don't look at you. They're not frightened of you. There's nothing like that at all. So you're just sort of like, I mean, we saw we saw birdlife in the kayak. So a lot more there than anywhere. Wow, what were they called? It wasn't a seagull. It was a it looks like a seagull. Yeah. But the big egg an osprey in that was on awesome. Well what an albatross when anything the hell was an albatross? No. No it's Ross isn't Gulf Coast. You're mixing the two definitely not there. Not there. You can see those.

23:18 It wasn't a frigate. Birdie there for your bird is now big. We saw those, you too. Yeah. But um, we'll put a link in the description for what a we saw and what While Mike, we saw. Yeah. But the next day after that, so we covered the a penguin, that was the day after the yeah. Straps. And then we sat on the boat for two days because, you know, we yeah, after the a Yang, we well, that's the cool thing is, we came back after the emperor. Penguin. We pull in. Yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right. Yeah. Two days in the bay where we began. Yeah. And that could phrase station. Yeah. The staff was phenomenal. Yeah. Like, filling that time they were Very there was a dude. They're from France.

24:01 That was a former yoga teacher. Yes. And he put on a yoga class. And I gotta say, I am fat lazy and stupid, but I love that yoga class. You really don't want. Yeah, I really did. It was not beginner yoga either. Yeah, it was not, it was, I was like, I was like the, you know, the after drunk, sweats, when you're doing it, I was soaking wet. And there were funny, thing is, is like it here. I could just like, every time I looked up like when I The downward facing dog and the roll over each your pig snout, or whatever. The fuck it was. I would see people sitting on the couches and they weren't looking at anybody, but me, and I'm like, holy day those funny.

24:43 Yeah. But I mean when you see like somebody that's really well, the thing is, I tried. No. And that's all that matters. Yeah, and I was just like, I was struggling to dry so and and also we had closed. The bar, the previous nine. Nights in a row. So I had the sweats and so I'm in there. And I was just, like soaking wet, you know, and dripping off me and people are looking. And there's literally water falling off me, which is totally disgusting. You know, it's that, you know, the fat. I mean, I felt like the Chris Farley drunken phase, you know, we were like, holy shit. You know, I live in a van down, I didn't even have a van.

25:23 Let's remember hearing here by me, like, The noise has emanated from behind me. Yeah, I got a lot of attention of other people looking at me, the instructor came over and like, held me up at one point. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It was like moving my limbs and then he realized that they wouldn't they don't do that. Oh, you know, you need to put your foot here, I go. Yeah. But then the rest of my body won't do anything. I know, hey, we work on that. We work on that a lot. You know, that's what I discovered hip abductors are in the tightest muscle in your body as well. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, hands down. That was another two days and then we got back on the floor. We got white, we got we got stuck there for another two days because he was supposed to leave on the 21st and we're going to be home by the 23rd. Yes.

26:11 And so we got back to fray Bay and then what happened was is we got fogged in and they came in and they and was really cool because they said well, they told us when the fog clears will be out, we've looked at some extended weather reports. We can't tell you this is Act. But here it is Wednesday. And we're supposed to go out today. It doesn't look like we're going to go out until Friday. Yeah. And people are and then womb, not everybody, but everybody abided, then they were like, okay yeah, we understand and then we book that stuff. And then amazing staff though, helping everybody because the Wi-Fi was very, very spotty. Yeah, it worked. They helped everybody book their flights and things like it seemed like it worked between 5:00 and 6:00 every day really well, and Then it didn't, yeah, we just sort of spotty like you could you get a text? And I get a text from two hours ago and stuff like that. I get some like, what?

27:07 I sent one text, maybe the entire time that one through it. Will the weird thing is, I picked phone call the wife and I actually talked to her for almost a half a minute and said, please contact travel agent. So as we're stuck here, can you get them and tell them? And in our agent actually went to them and call them and they booked everything they fixed it all up. And then we I'm back and I mean, everything was cool. We got there, we don't that. I mean it's at the only sad thing that I feel from that is we're stuck on the boat. A lot of people organized, a lot of activities like our buddy was with us Jim. He he organizes exercise thing and there's like eight or ten people out there with you doing lunges all over the boat on the outside and they hated them but they loved it, you know, because it's activity and then we got home, we did that we Flume, we got home Christmas morning, I mean, every flight, when You figure that we're leaving those four flights in a day and a half and that was we left on a Friday.

28:05 We got home on Sunday, Christmas morning, we flew through Puntarenas. We went to Santiago, we went to Santiago overnight to Miami. Miami in the morning, we got on a flight and came to d.c. on Christmas day and we didn't have any problems with any flight. Sweden, have any problems to check. Luggage, we'd have any problems, any nothing happened. Nothing. Those, when the Polar Storm to is You know, a lot of people in southwest and they were all like freaking out and we were like, okay well if you get stuck we're going to the beach in Miami. But I think the idea that we may be because we didn't care but it worked out really, really well with Dan. If we cared then we would have gotten stuck. Yeah, yeah. So it was something that but I don't think we can go back. No, I don't need to go back.

28:52 I think I would go back on the other side. I would not go back on that side or the emperor's or that would be really cool if we got. That would be so much. I would do because it was just crazy. Amazing. The other side has a station to like the really, really big station. We want we have to go back there but I got to tell you that we're going to come to an end here. We've been talking because this is really exciting for us and it's great to be back. It's great to talk to you. And this was an amazing, amazing adventure and I think we have we have to talk about. We'll talk about Galapagos probably after This and there's quite a few others that we can bring up and talk about that. We're really cool and it's great to be back.

29:35 Yeah it sure is and we love our viewers and our listeners hit us up on the website a record of my father.com and the Instagram as well. Thank ya party on