Absolute silence went through me

During 19 days without connection, crossing one of the most extreme seas in the world, Drea León lived an experience that was much more than a voyage: an encounter with silence… and with herself.

There are places that cannot be explained. They are felt. And Antarctica is one of them. But it wasn't the cold that affected Drea León most, travel content creator. Nor the giant icebergs or the wild animals. It was the silence.

An absolute, deep silence, impossible to find anywhere else in the world. A silence that is not the absence of sound, but the presence of something greater. Something that goes through you, that forces you to slow down, to look, to simply be.

After days sailing on a sailboat, crossing the feared Drake Passage, she understood that this journey was not going to be just an extreme adventure. It was going to be a journey inward. Here is her account in her own words:

"When I understood this was not just another trip"

Four days before the expedition, I decided I was joining. That's how it all started. Without much time to process it. I packed my gear against the clock, rented special clothing for extreme temperatures, and headed to Ushuaia.

I knew it wasn't going to be a conventional trip. But I had no idea how much. From the moment I stepped on board the sailboat, something changed: I stopped being a passenger. I became part of the crew.

I'm always planning new adventures. Right now, for example, I'm planning to go to the Amazon without water, without food and without a tent, in a survival experience.

The truth is that the clothing you need to bring to Antarctica is quite particular because the cold is extreme. Even though we were in summer season, the climate in Antarctica changes constantly — it can change from one hour to the next and suddenly you can find yourself surrounded by ice.

It's a pretty unpredictable climate, you have to be very well prepared for temperatures that can reach -40, -50 degrees. So I rented the clothing and was ready to depart on a boat with 60 people from all over the world on board."

The Drake: the noise before the silence

"Crossing the Drake Passage means facing the unpredictable. Enormous waves, constant wind, night watches, the body in tension. Eight-hour shifts, lookout duty in the middle of the night, strapped in with a harness staring into the darkness.

Out there everything is noise: the sea, the wind, the mind. But it's also the beginning of something. Because to reach that silence everyone talks about… first you have to go through the chaos.

The people who board the sailboat are mostly those who have always dreamed of reaching Antarctica — some sail a small boat, others simply do it as a hobby. I love sailing a lot, I'm taking helmsman courses and have been getting more into navigation, but I never imagined that the first time I'd be at the helm, I'd be heading to Antarctica and crossing the Drake Passage, one of the most dangerous in the world, with waves of up to 14 metres and extremely strong winds of 120 km/h… Quite a challenge.

They say that to reach Antarctica you have to pay a toll, and that toll is crossing the Drake Passage. So, obviously, I was scared. I had already been to Antarctica the year before, but on a cruise. The experience on a sailboat is completely different because this is a sail training vessel. On the cruise you enjoy yourself, eat at the ship's restaurant, there's a spa, a pool… Here it's a completely different experience. You are part of the crew.

You take part in all the activities and tasks on board related to lowering and raising sails, helming, being at the captain's disposal, doing the mandatory watch duties. You have sailing classes where you are told what to do, the areas of the ship where you'll be working and what your tasks are.

The captain is in the cabin, always keeping a close eye on the ship's course — of course, because with winds that strong the ship really needs to maintain a very precise course. You can't take your eyes off the helm for even two minutes, so we take turns. We have eight-hour shifts, of which we work four and rest eight, then we go back to work four, and that's how it goes, 24 hours a day."

The night something clicked

"There was a moment I will never forget. It was the middle of the night. I was on watch. The sea was moving strongly, the cold was intense, and the sky… completely covered by the Milky Way.

There, in the middle of all that, I understood something: there was nowhere to escape to. There was no phone. There were no distractions. There was no external noise to pull me away from that moment. There was only me. And that, at first, is uncomfortable. But afterwards… it brings order.

You're strapped in with a safety harness for hours and your mind and your endurance start to be tested. You're putting yourself to the test — but once you understand that you're there for a reason, it becomes a completely moving, healing experience for me.

On a personal growth level, it teaches you so much — starting with teamwork on board, because we're all in charge of a 1911 sailboat that has history. By the second day you are already part of the ship, and you feel that if someone on the team fails, we all fail. It's a small team: the cabins are shared between four and five people.

It took us five days to cross the Drake. We had quite a calm outward crossing — the sea was flat for the first two or three days, which was quite unusual. This doesn't normally happen in the Drake.

We went to Deception Island, which is a volcanic caldera with parts submerged underwater and areas above the surface where you can walk. There wasn't a drop of snow there. That caught my attention. I saw fewer icebergs on this route than last year. It was a summer with a lot of rain, and that raises the sea temperature."

Arriving in Antarctica: absolute silence

"And then you arrive. And you understand. The silence in Antarctica is not normal. It resembles nothing. It is so deep that it almost feels physical. You search for a sound. Anything. And there is none.

Only the occasional distant cracking of ice. Nothing more. That silence forces you to inhabit the moment in a way we are not used to. No rush. No stimulation. No escape. And that is where everything makes sense.

Giant icebergs, penguins, whales, leopard seals. Everything is breathtaking. But what changes is not what you see. It's how you see it. Without distractions, everything is amplified. Everything becomes more real.

You start to see an enormous, majestic amount of ice — icebergs the size of skyscrapers, giants. Mountains in the middle of the ocean… You look out and you can't believe it.

The silence in Antarctica is something astonishing. It feels as if you are not on Earth. It is such a deep silence — you search within it for even a drop of sound, and there is none, except for the occasional cracking."

19 days without internet: what I didn't know I needed

"We were 19 days without connection. In the first few days I would pick up my phone out of habit. Then I stopped doing it. And I started to notice things I hadn't seen before.

Deeper conversations. More present moments. Real time. Until the signal returned, near Cape Horn. And with it, the noise returned. And that's when I thought: how good this silence has been for me.

Zero Wi-Fi, zero internet, connected to what we were doing, to the present — and we didn't even know what was happening in the world, and that was very strange.

We experienced the contrast when we arrived at Cape Horn, because it is one of the most difficult seas in the world to navigate. That moment marked me. I got to helm at Cape Horn. A dream for any sailor. And there I was, doing it.

I felt pride. But also something deeper: the certainty that we are capable of much more than we believe. And at that moment the signal reached the ship, we got internet, and it was very strange to see the contrast — in some way, everyone's attitude changed because we were all glued to our phones. For me it was like: 'wow, it's a good thing we didn't have internet before.' Being disconnected makes you appreciate everything more."

Women at the end of the world

"On board I met incredible stories. Women from all over the world who decided to leave everything behind to live this experience. And women like Rocío Delger, the Argentine engineer in charge of the engine room, doing incredibly hard work in an extreme environment. She operates a tractor engine and takes care of everything. It's a source of pride. Something that not so long ago would have been unthinkable for a woman.

We read, we watched old films about ships, we talked about ships… It was a 1911 vessel heading to Antarctica with an engineer on board, with women at the helm from all over the world — from Spain, Australia, Russia — who came to put themselves to the test.

It was incredible — you end up forming wonderful bonds. The helm, for example, was wooden and old, and it was heavy for me. I watched my male crewmates move it — they had different strength. I was alone at the helm trying to turn it, having to put in much more effort. And the engineer told me the same thing: 'I have to unscrew a bolt and I don't have the strength a man has for it, but I find a way — maybe I need to use bigger tools, but I can do it.'

The most remarkable thing about all of this is that this experience is open to anyone who wants to live it. It is an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life."