The GCW Tour, Buenos Aires & Antarctica: Kayaking! Or, Adventures with Sports Gear that Doesn't Fit

This afternoon's landng was the first chance for some of the excursions: Cruising, Kayaking, and Snowshoeing. I had signed up for Cruising and Kayaking, and was in the "A" group for Kayaking so today was my chance.

I'm not sure what language the word "kayak" comes from, but the word certainly does not mean "one size fits all" in that language. Here's how the afternoon went...

The instruction was to meet in the designated gathering spot wearing a layer or two of long underwear, warm socks, a hat, and carrying spare gloves and sunglasses. Once everyone had gathered, we went down to the tender to gear up.

The first thing they handed out were the shoes and mittens. Normally, I wear a 47 in Europoean sizes and the largest dry suit shoe they had was a 48. Mittens are mittens, so it seems we're all good. Moving on.

Next we got the dry suits. These come in two parts. The first is the underlayer, which is like a big fleece onesie, over which goes the rubber outer layer. So I stick my legs in the onesie and pull it up to my waist, bend over, stick my arms into the arm holes and pull the suit up over my shoulders. Then I try to stand up straight.

I got to the point where my back was about 15 degrees from vertical when I ran out of onesie. Thus, the only way I was going to be able to stand up would be if I was a heck of a lot stronger, pulled a Hulk, and tore the thing in two. Otherwise, I will be staring at the floor. So off comes the onesie.

But no worries, the instructor tells me I'll be fine with another layer of sweats or thermals, so I go back to my cabin and add a sweatshirt. Then it's back to the tender to put on the outer layer.

My original outer layer has been replaced by a larger one that belongs to one of the crew (or something). Fair enough. Imagine a giant rubber and vinyl onesie that comes apart at the waist with built in rubber feet and rubber gaskets at the wrists and neck. I'll spare you the details -- cause it took awhile and gave me flashbacks to the PET scanner -- but I got it on.

Now the shoes go on over the rubber dry suit feet. Which would've been good if my shoes were, say, 50s, but there just wasn't room for my feet, my two layers of socks, and the rubber footies all in that size 48 boot. So no sealed waterproof shoes.

No worries, says the instructor, just wear your Crocs. Crocs? Sure, why not? Who am I to question?

So now the life jacket goes on, the hat goes on, and we all jump into the landing craft and make for the beach where the kayaks are waiting.

We get a few reminders on kayaking, get paired up, and then the instructors -- now there's two of them -- start situating everyone in their kayaks. The instructor gets to me, moves the foot pegs on my designated kayak as far out as they will go, and has my jump in.

My feet hit the pegs long before my legs are completely in the kayak. So now the instructors are looking at each other, looking at my legs, and generally haven't a clue what to do now.

So I tell them it's okay, and that I'll skip the kayaking and just wander around the island.

But despite all that, there was one benefit from at least trying to kayak: the nearby penguins were really curious about what was going on so they kept wandering over to check it out. When they couldn't get close enough on land they started swimming over, and that was fun to watch, too

Also, I learned something: Crocs really aren't appropriate footwear for hking around on snow covered islands in Antarctica.

By the way, the penguin in the photo with a rock? That's how they build their nests: by swiping rocks from other nests and piling them upon their own. In fact, we were told some scientists at a station went out with some fast drying blue spray paint and painted a couple of the nests in the local penguin colony blue. With a couple of weeks the blue rocks were pretty much evenly dispersed across all the nests in the colony.

(Tired of penguing pictures yet? Hope not, 'cause here are some more...)