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| Sign on King George's Island, Antarctica 2013 |
Her first job was overseeing a project at the State of Minnesota. The project was a relative disaster but she learned how the software world worked outside of 3M and decided to write a book about the experience. It took a year of hard work, a complete rewrite of the first draft and innumerable reviews and contributions from Tom, but in the end the book they coauthored - Lean Software Development - was a huge success.
Gradually Mary learned how to promote the book by speaking at conferences and offering classes to companies. It turned out that the classes provided far more revenue than the book, and the conferences paid for her to travel to increasingly distant places. She quickly discovered that travel was more fun and less exhausting with Tom along, and he found that travel provided excellent opportunities for his favorite pastime - photography. So he "retired" and joined Mary as she traveled.
Soon the pattern for their "retirement hobby" was established. If Mary was invited to speak at a place they had not been to, the answer was always "Yes, if you pay your share of travel for both of us." Combining multiple engagements lowered the cost for hosts and provided free time for photography. Trips to Europe became common, then the itineraries expanded into round-the-world excursions. Before long the travel included six continents and over forty countries. After two decades of "trying to be retired," the pandemic slowed things down. Tom and Mary quit "trying" and actually retired.
This is the story of our travel, the story of what it was like to visit Antarctica, South America, Africa, Australia/New Zealand, Asia, Europe, and finally, rediscover the wonders of North America.
Antarctica
We start the story with Antarctica, the last continent we visited.
You can't book a flight to Antarctica, you generally go by ship. And as long as you are at sea, you don't want to miss South Georgia Island, home to hundreds of thousands of king penguins, breeding elephant seals, and nesting seabirds. A typical trip by sea might look like this:
It takes a couple of days at sea to reach the Falkland Islands, a couple more days at sea to reach South Georgia Island, and another couple of days to reach the islands north of the Antarctic Peninsula. After exploring Antarctica, a couple of days in the Drake Passage will likely include the roughest seas of the trip. It's best to be on a ship with stabilizers for these long days at sea.
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| Three week trip to Antarctica via the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. |
The purpose of the trip is not time at sea, but photography on land - and for this you choose the season: Spring (November and December) for mating and nesting, or Summer (January and February) for babies and whales. We went twice - in 2013 and 2015 - in November both times. What follows is a photographic summary of each major destination.
Tierra del Fuego
The southern tip of South America can be rounded by ship through the longer but safer Straight of Magellan (yellow) or the treacherous Drake Passage (purple). The land in between is Tierra del Fuego, n archipelago shared by Argentina and Chile. Chile owns the Straight of Magellan and the Drake Passage. Argentina owns the land east of a line beginning at the entrance to the Straight of Magellan going south to the Beagle Channel and east along the center of the Beagle Channel to the Drake Passage. In the southwest corner of Argentina is the city of Ushuaia (red arrow), the starting point of most tourist ships traveling to Antarctica.
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| Tierra del Fuego |
We flew to Ushuaia after engagements in South America, arriving a day ahead of time in order to be sure we did not miss our ship - the National Geographic Explorer.
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| Ushuaia, the most southern city in the world and the base for most ships to Antarctica. |
The morning of our departure began with a boat tour of the Beagle Channel before boarding the ship. We saw huge colonies of imperial shags and harems of fur seals, and learned that it is difficult to take good photographs from a rapidly moving boat.
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| Thousands of Imperial Shags nest on islands in the Beagle Channel |
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| A Fur Seal Harem in the Beagle Channel |
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| Our Ship Awaits |
Falkland Islands
Photography had to wait a couple of days as we gained our sea legs on the trip to the Falkland Islands. But we were rewarded at our first stop - New Island on the west side of the Falklands. We spent the morning photographing nesting Rockhopper Penguins, Imperial Shags, and Albatross. In the afternoon we visited nearby Carcass Island, which welcomes visitors to its large sheep farm.
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| Rockhopper Penguins guarding their nests. |
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| A pair of Imperial Shags |
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| A nesting albatross and a pair at a nearby nest. |
After visiting the western Falkland Islands, we headed to Stanley.
