We awoke at 4am (there is 24 hour daylight here right now). We're at the 64 degree point, nearly to the Antarctic Circle, and the views are simply breathtaking. Snow covered ice masses on both sides of the ship, with blue ice nearly everywhere you look. (I learned that ice is blue if it’s very old, where the compression squeezes out all the air and the think ice only reflect the blue spectrum. It’s amazing to see, and pictures don’t do it justice.)
Last night, the sun was shining brightly at 8pm for dinner. And today the sun was shining brightly again. Our morning landing was on Cuverville Island, and we hiked to the top. It was only 850 feet elevation change, but the snow was up to our knees in many places. After reaching the top, we took fun pictures – jumping in the air, cartwheels, headstands, and even a 6-woman pyramid. Then, we slid down on our butts in many places for fun. Most of the time, I was sans gloves, hat, and even jacket. It was warm, bright, and fantastic.
We also saw an emperor penguin, which means so far we’ve seen 4 of the 17 species of penguins. In the 30 years that one of our leaders has been coming on this route, he’s seen only two dozen emperor penguins on this route. This one was ~2 years old, so he didn’t yet have the mauve beak and orange ears. But he really stood out, because he’s much bigger than the gentoos, chinstraps, and adelies we’ve been seeing.
Here's Lauren's picture, which is much better than mine:
The weather is so beautiful that we had lunch outside today on the deck, complete with a BBQ and picnic tables. There wasn’t a trace of wind at that point. The music was blasting so we were dancing, singing, and doing a conga line. Even the leaders were commenting that the weather today was an 11 on a scale from 1 to 10. They told us that this is the type of weather they see less than once a year, so even THEY were excited about it. But the sun here is no joke. I had chemical and physical sunblock on, and I still ended up with hyperpigmentation :( It took me nearly a year to get it under control after I got home from Africa, and in a single day it’s back with a vengeance. My lips are also sunburned – a beautiful color but I wish they weren’t hurting so much. It was totally worth it, though, because the views were simply spectacular.
Here is a view of the deck after the BBQ:
While we were on the ship, a Minke whale starting swimming near us so we were able to watch it for a while. Later in the evening, we saw a family of orcas (killer whales) swimming around our ship and playing with one another. There were at least 8 of them (these are Frank Todd's photos because mine aren't near as nice).
Our afternoon landing was on the continent at Neko Harbor and climbed high so we could slide down – yippee! This slide was much steeper than the one earlier today, and even more fun. You can see how high we hiked in this first photo because the boat provides some perspective.
We could also see chunks of ice crack and fall into the ocean. It is loud, like thunder, and then sheets of ice and snow slide into the water. It’s beautiful to see, but you can imagine how dangerous it would be if our Zodiac was anywhere nearby.
We've seen a lot of gentoo penguins so far:
We saw another Widdell seal, and I even saw mating penguins. I wasn’t sure at first what they were doing, but then I figured it out and took some video:
After dinner, we headed out to our campsite, where we’d spend the evening.
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