CNN isn't my favorite source, I rarely cite it. Nevertheless, CNN Travel has an excellent long article on the Drake Passage and going to Antartica that I'm happy to recommend to you. The DrsC have made that trip and this article conveys the experience very well.
I'll add a few things from our excursion across the Drake. We went some years ago, flying to Buenos Aires, and from there to Ushuaia to meet our ship.
The ship was the Andrea, a former Norwegian coastal steamer, reequipped as an expedition ship with outboard motor powered zodiac boats for going ashore. We were about 90 passengers on board. It was owned by a Croatian firm and chartered to our tour company, Grand Circle.
The expedition staff included a geologist, a marine biologist, an ornithologist, an expedition leader, a couple of Peruvian boat boys, and an old Scots historian who told great stories about long-ago polar expeditions. We also had a physician as a permanent member of ships crew.
We experienced the very rough water the article describes. One passenger broke her elbow falling and required a medivac flight from the Chilean Air Force base on King George Island in the South Shetland Islands. Her required-for-all-passengers medical insurance paid for the $15K flight to a Puenta Arenas hospital.
Our crossing to the Antarctic Peninsula took a bit over 24 hours and I basically stayed in my bunk, took meclizine hydrochloride (aka Bonine) regularly, and ate nothing. I never got seasick. The other DrC ate some ice cream and, in spite of the Bonine did throw up.
Our cabin had two port holes and we would see green water - not foam - outside when the ship rolled in that direction. The Drake shake is no joke. Once you get to the Antarctic Peninsula the water is calm, but the trip to and from is ... memorable.
If you've access to a globe of the earth, pick it up and look at the South Pole area. You'll see that, as the article describes, there is unobstructed ocean completely encircling Antarctica and the winds do howl around and around.
You will also notice that the Antarctic Peninsula and the tip of South America look like two hands reaching toward each other. The article doesn't mention it but we were told the mountainous penisula and the Andes in South America are essentially one continuous mountain chain that dips under water at Cape Horn and reemerges to become the peninsula.
I've written this before but several things struck me about the Antarctic Peninsula. I expected sea mammals - orcas, sea lions, seals, whales - and I expected snow, ice, sea birds and penguins. I saw all of these in profusion. What I didn't expect is that the scenery, while stark, is beautiful in its own way. The wind-sculpted glaciers aground in what they've nicknamed "Glacier Bay" were surreal.
We are certainly glad we went.
