Sailing to Antarctica Under Sunny Skies
Leslie Nuttman says Antarctica seemed “a bit out there” when her sister, a biologist, first proposed their trip.
But Nuttman and her husband had always enjoyed tagging along on adventures to wildlife-rich locales with her sister and brother-in-law, so the four planned their 2020 Antarctic cruise two years in advance.
“Antarctica is wild, unique and stunningly beautiful, with some species of wildlife in numbers not to be seen anywhere else in the world,” says Nuttman, who lives in Allyn, Washington. “I put it on a par with the Galápagos Islands or Africa in that respect. Ice also has an ethereal beauty all its own that needs to be seen to be believed.”
They arrived at the southern tip of Argentina in January, leaving the cruise port of Ushuaia and crossing the Drake Passage on a 19-day sailing to Antarctica, where Nuttman photographed this iceberg under the Southern Hemisphere’s blue summer skies.
“I would encourage any traveler with a sense of adventure to add the southern polar regions to their bucket list of places to visit,” she says. “Go on a small ship so you can walk among hundreds of thousands of penguins, visit albatross nesting sites and see whales breach close enough to your Zodiac to splash you.”
“Lots of people have asked me why I chose to go to Antarctica,” Nuttman says, “and now I just smile and share amazing photos and stories of a once-in-a-lifetime trip.”
– This story originally appeared in the May/June 2021 edition of the AAA Washington member magazine, Journey.
