January 22 walking on ice!

……. this afternoon the Captain wanted to take us to an ice shelf or at least onto fast ice (sea ice that is attached to the land); I thinks he’s having as much fun as we are. The waters of much of this area are not well charted so he sent the helicopter up to look - yes the ship has a helicopter on board but it is only for navigation purposes and emergencies - and fun for those staff privileged to get to fly!  It was looking promising so he launched a small depth-finding craft to navigate in front of the ship to get us close to the ice shelf – and avoid running aground! It was quite thrilling. 

This is the depth-finding vessel. It looks so small but has 'the equipment'

Eventually they found a place where we could land on the pack ice. You need to understand that this looked like a few inches of snow on top of the water and we were going to land there and walk on it!! This was no ice shelf.  Gulp, whoa! The zodiacs literally drove up onto the ice and we inched our way forward and literally rolled over the front of the zodiacs onto the ice - one false step and we’d be in the drink. 

As we got closer we could see the ice dotted with seals

Cute hat, cuter pengins

This is an Emperor penguin - cooling off!

Once ‘ashore’ we simply wandered around in a white daze through boot-sucking soft snow avoiding the wildlife but following alongside penguins trails – the snow was hard to walk on and a few people got stuck. Recovery was a bit challenging as we were not allowed to sit or knee on the surface for fear of spreading bird flu. Despite that it was rather otherworldly. We are in the Antarctic surrounded by snow and ice and wildlife - callooh callay ……..

Fascinating watching the kayakers loading straight from the ice

This group was off on a couple of hours walk

Dainty penguin footsteps beside Lindsay's clumping great gumboots

All too soon it was time to leave. As we were walking back to the zodiacs a couple of Adelie penguins wandered along beside us heading for the water. One broke away and waddled to the zodiacs where people were starting to gather. It looked for all the world like he wanted to join us. After a little 'chat', he gave up trying and wandered back to his mate.  Darling little things they are - so cute and comical and fearless. 

As we approached the ship we passed a small iceberg (called as bergy bit) and out popped 4-5 seals. They were obviously curious of this strange black being with orange blobs on top. They put on quite a show.

And so ended a spectacular day in frozen Antarctica with cool music to round out the evening while we sipped on a cocktail of course and watched the sky become streaked with orange fire.

Yes that's a harp. It glorious to listen to