Land Ho

This morning at breakfast we met a very interesting woman that has taken a year off her job teaching in San Jose, CA to travel the world.  She’s started in Central and South America, taken this trip, next is New Zealand, Asia, Africa and Europe.  She’s documenting it on her blog, jennieray.com if you’re interested to see what she’s up to.

We cruised around Wihelmina Bay to look at icebergs and whatever else we happened to find.  We again were lucky that it was a partly cloudy day without too much wind.  Again, we were the first off the ship (Maloney’s are the ones that are 15 minutes ahead of everyone else, remember!).  We took aff across the bay to motor around our first berg. 

The ice is really spectacular, with crystal blue showing out from underneath the white snow.  These bodies of ice have floated into this bay from a long ways away.  They are worn underneath from the waves and have stunning formations carved into their sides.  They have ‘calved’ off of larger pieces of ice formed on the land. 

Flipper, our guide, brought some of the ice onto the boat.  Air is compressed into the ice while it is forming, so the ice almost explodes as you tap it with a pick.  We all were given samples to try.  It’s pure water (no salt) and does sort of pop in your mouth – nature’s own pop-rocks.  They’ll bring some on the ship and you can have your afternoon refreshment made with iceberg ice.  Only here folks!

We ran across one iceberg with a young crabeater seal lounging on it.  We all got good shots before heading back to the ship.  The hour and a half jaunt made me appreciate the various forms ice will take as it floats and turns and spins, all quite beautiful.

During lunch, the ship moved through a passageway to position us in Paradise Bay.  This will be our first chance to actually set foot on the mainland of Antarctica.  Our landing spot is the site of a deserted research station run by Argentina, which they moved a few years ago to a spot around the corner.  We were immediately greeted by a colony of Gentoo penguins moving about on the rocky shore.  We climbed halfway up the ridge to a lookout point of the bay.  The views were absolutely stunning!  We caught glimpses of the sun shining off nearby snow-capped mountains.  There were icebergs floating everywhere.

We took a zodiac ride around the bay.  Our first stop was to watch a pair of humpbacked whales.  With a little patience we were able to watch them come to the surface and take a few sips of breath before diving back into the water.  We also got to visit a couple of very neat icebergs and a bird nesting area.  It was a great visit to Paradise Bay.

Tonight, David and David K are sleeping on the mainland along with 60 others.  I’m sure they’ll have some interesting stories to tell when they return in the morning.