Queenstown, New Zealand - January 7, 2025

There have been very few places we have traveled to in which we did not have good WiFi.  Our biggest surprise was our first trip to Antarctica, from where we were able to call our parents quite often, and it was as if they were right next door.  We’ll see how that works for us on this trip.

So, what does it take to prepare for a month long trip where there are no shops should you have left anything behind?  Well, let’s show you!

Electronics/Photography/Charging Equipment 


Jody’s side of the bed (daytime).  These units will be fully loaded by nighttime so everything is charged for the morning’s adventure.  Oh, and yes, Jody did bring her electric toothbrush with her.  And a boat full of people are grateful.


Mel’s side of the bed during the day.  It will also load up at night.


Photography:  
We EACH typically take 3-5,000 photos on our three week trips.  This is a five week trip….We’ll let you know at the end what our totals are, but nonetheless, we promise we will NEVER, EVER make you sit through each photo.  Plus, this time we have pledged (hehehe) to delete photos each night to avoid too many duplicates!  We try to categorize our photos into subjects like BIRDS, SEALS, WHALES, ICEBERGS, etc.  Yes, icebergs are amazingly beautiful and in different colors…you’ll see!

We were due for new phones, so we each upgraded to the new iPhone 16 Pro.  Photos are amazing, just not on this blog….sorry!



Ok now!  

Top Left:  Jody’s pouch with extra wires/adaptors, and such.

Sony 35mm camera with an amazing zoom lens that is no longer available.  

Two sets of binoculars.  The black case Mel gave to Jody prior to our last Antarctic trip and the brown case holds Mel’s binoculars he got for his bar mitzvah!

The rest:  includes a GoPro which extends long enough that we will be able to hold it under water to try to capture penguins, seals, and whales.  This is a new form of photography for us, but have seen what others were able to photograph on our last trip, and we can’t wait to see what we can capture!

The white units are adaptors so we can download photos from our photo cards (chips storing photos) to our phones, iPads, or in Mel’s case, his computer (Gigastone package has a 256 G photo card).

The ScanDisk is a 512G thumb drive so we can pull photos off of the iPhones/iPads/Computer to free up space on those units.

Light blue is an extra battery for Jody’s iPhone; the black one next to it is the extra battery for the 35mm camera.

The pink and orange rubber item on the left and the black string on the right are phone protectors to keep the phones attached to our bodies — needless to say, even with insurance, it would be a complete bummer to OOPS, lose a phone overboard, or pop out of the zodiac.  No replacement until we get home!  So, these insure we keep our phones with us.  :-)

Tomorrow, once we are on board the ship and can unpack, we’ll show you what we brought to keep us warm the next four weeks!  We sail tomorrow evening, so that will be our first test for onboard WiFi!

Until then, 

Love, Jody and Mel



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