December 23 Antarctic Peninsula

 It’s almost impossible to describe the feeling of arriving in Antarctica.  Seeing the first bit of land and taking a deep breath of some of the freshest, crispest air on earth is exhilarating and dare I say breathtaking!

We embarked and disembarked the zodiacs through these side portals

There are 15 zodiacs on board

The plan had been to land on Cuverville Island in the South Shetland Islands west of the Antarctic Peninsula but the weather was not good – high gusting winds. So the captain headed for Fournier Bay. The zodiacs were in the water almost before the ship stopped. What a glorious vista – crystal waters, dazzling snow, ice all around. That morning we took our first zodiac cruise through brash ice and bergy bits and ventured as near as we could to the glacier emptying into the sea. I’ll let the photos tell the story.

Brown Skuas displaying mating behaviour

Icebergs - fanciful shapes in colours ranging from white, blue, green, mauve

Neko Harbour

After lunch we moved on to Neko Harbour and our first shore excursion. The snowshoe people climbed to a high ridge while the rest of the landing party clambered up a hill in thigh deep snow being careful not to cross the penguin pathways. I made an attempt to climb up the icy bank to do the walk but it was a bit slippery for me – I was fearful of falling (mainly coming down). Instead I got to do a wonderful zodiac cruise with Tamsin (one of the guides) ducking into small bays, looking for whales. She was called back to pick up more passengers and together we spent a delightful time cruising between glorious, fanciful icebergs. We also carefully shadowed a couple of Humpback Whales silently slipping through the water. We were involved in a couple of Citizen Science projects and later that afternoon we measured the density of plankton in the water at different depths, this gives an indication of the health of the water.

Steps were cut into the ice bank to allow people to climb onto the snow

In parts the snow was thigh deep

Measuring plankton density for water health

Later that day we were hoping to get to Petermann Island but the weather was pretty bad. Instead we settled on a ship-cruise through the Lemaire Channel later that night. This was to be the most southerly point of this expedition. It had been a wonder-filled day.