Posted on by Tina Hay · 6 Comments

We’re Gathering in Buenos Aires

The passengers on “Expedition to Antarctica”—about 200 of us altogether—are beginning to arrive in Buenos Aires, the starting point for our adventure. The official arrival date isn’t until tomorrow, but some passengers (including me) opted to get here a day early, and I suspect a few moved up their departure in order to avoid the winter storm that’s hammering the East Coast.

(The weather here in Buenos Aires is a decided contrast to what much of the U.S. is experiencing right now, as evidenced by the AccuWeather forecast for today. Don’t hate us.)

Getting to Buenos Aires typically involves an overnight flight from the U.S. For me, the trip started in State College on Wednesday with flights to Philadelphia and then Miami, and then a flight that left Miami at 10:45 pm and arrived in Buenos Aires about nine hours later.

Here’s an iPhone photo I took out the plane window as we climbed out of Philadelphia yesterday afternoon; it was the ice in the water that caught my eye. The guy in the seat next to me Read more

Posted on by Tina Hay · 1 Comment

Kim Yuhas Gets Us in the Antarctic Mood

In looking for Antarctica images to use in my onboard photography lectures, I poked around on Flickr and elsewhere, and I also thought about friends who’ve been to the Antarctic and who might give me permission to use some of their photos. One such friend is Kim Yuhas, a Penn State grad who’s now an attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission and who went to Antarctica in November 2015. Her Facebook album from the trip is loaded with terrific images. In addition to using a bunch of her photos to illustrate points in my PowerPoint onboard, I also thought I’d share some with you here.

Kim Yuhas in the Antarctic, November 2015.

What’s especially cool for me is that Kim was an intern at The Penn Stater at the time I was getting ready to host the Alumni Association’s 2002 Antarctic trip—and, though I didn’t know it at the time, my trip planted a seed with her.

I learned this when I complimented her on her Facebook photo album back in 2015. She responded: “I have been meaning to tell you that it was YOUR trip that piqued my fascination with the continent. I remember thinking, Wow, you can go there?! I’ve always wanted to say THANK YOU for the inspiration! It was a longtime obsession and dream come true to finally be able to make it happen.”

The other day I asked Kim to tell me how the trip finally came about. It turns out Read more