After last night’s extraordinary sighting, today was always going to be hard to surpass. We’re en route to Neko Harbour, around 100km from Palmer Station, so in fact we were in the vicinity already when we sighted the whales last night.
An interesting development early on was that yesterday’s visitors had not yet left. Everything in Antarctica is highly ordered and organised, so our visit today was in the general manifest for ages, the other company which, in their very small craft Hebridean Sky was actually camping overnight, should have vacated in time for us to arrive, however they feigned stupidity and slept in, which is exceedingly embarrassing for their organisers. Our generous team gave them an extra 30 minutes to get sorted, but imagine the poor frozen buggers who were rudely awaken early to be told they had to pack up and clear off post haste!
After this slight hiatus, which as an observer was just great because we got to see another ship pass us by, the first time since we arrived, not counting the Palmer Station people, we started offloading our Zodiacs and the whole machine of Tourism Antarctica got underway.
Today we are in the third of our five groups so plenty of time to breakfast first, then be on deck nine to begin our circuits. The ship is like a ghost town yet again, admittedly last night’s late night excitement may have caused many to sleep in, so we were able to get many miles under our belt without even having to avoid other walkers. Slowly the regular acquaintances appeared, we swapped stories as we walk, and before we know it we had covered seven miles before it was time to go and prepare for our excursion.
Preparing for excursion actually means ensuring we have multiple layers on, t-shirt, jumper or sweat-shirt, inner fleece, the orange outer waterproof, then life-saver vest and in my case finally my waterproof rucksack. Below stairs it’s jeans, waterproof over-trousers and double socks! We then head down towards the after deck, which in better climes is our favourite jacuzzi / pool / cocktail venue, is for this trip the boot room for the duration, so we boot up and head off to deck three where we are checked off the ship by the pursur and then loaded into the waiting Zodiacs to be taken wherever today’s destination is.
Today’s destination is a sandy beach in a sheltered bay which is home to a colony of Gentoo penguins, and a gently sloping hill up which we were allowed to walk to about 300 ft, no easy matter I can confirm, but well worth the effort.
Noteworthy is the fact that the towering cliffs are holding back tonnes of packed snow, and at any time can calve spectacularly causing huge waves that could easily swamp the Zodiacs, so extra caution is required at all times. In fact, no such happening occurred, although some high level calves did cause some fabulous thundering noises and huge plumes of snow-cloud.
When we were taken across the mill-pond smooth bay, we were first to head up the path towards the top, and arrived in plenty of time to enjoy the peace for a few minutes with just the guide Luciano and our Ice Capitan, a magical moment. Rather than stay to listen to all the others arriving shouting at each other, we head back and then take the second route to a lovely colony of Gentoo who are in the early stages of caring for their new hatchlings, some of which are just 10 days old.
The penguin expert is on hand to answer our questions and point out all the interesting things we might not have noticed. One fabulous event is the concept of a penguin highway - they take the same path time after time, until the snow is worn down into tracks that are clearly defined, even to the point of having lanes so up-stream and down-stream traffic doesn’t collide (not alway the case, we noted!)
We take so long (and so many photos) that we miss the last of our designated Zodiacs back and have to wait until one is available after the net group have arrived - this is most acceptable to us, as it’s great to maximise the time we have on-land.
Eventually we do arrive back and quickly remove those bits we need to, and then it’s time for a rather late but extremely satisfying lunch in the patio grill, the pool-side destination we favour over all others. Then we recommence our milage until we reach 10. Our reward is gluwein and ice-cream - a combination that sounds dodgy but in fact works rather well, the sweetness of the wine complementing the ice-cream perfectly.
We return to our cabin for a while so I can write blogs (yesterday’s wasn’t even started at this time) and generally laze around for a short while, before we don our outer gear once again to watch our sailaway from Neko. A quick tea and biscuit on the after-deck behind Seabourn Square is just what’s needed before we head up into the headwind of deck ten forwards to watch us plough through or swoop around ice flows, depending on how large they are. We’re delighted to see another humpback display it’s fluke, but its a single occurrence we didn’t capture, however we went on to sea a great crab-eating seal basking on an iceberg, complete with bloody chops, obviously having recently finished dinner!
Tonight’s briefing explained our hastily changed plans for tomorrow, including an intended traverse of a narrow channel which would make for fascinating deck-side viewing this evening, so the rest of the ship’s timetable was modified to accommodate this. The other lecturers talked about glacier calving, world-record ice-swimming and dogs in the Antarctic Continent (they were outlawed in 1994) and the sad alternate usage of said animals by the expeditions of yesteryear.
We were booked into the Thomas Keller Grill again tonight, so headed up to the observation lounge on deck ten for aperitifs, whitest I attempted to upload yesterday’s photos, it was a painful process, each one taking around 5 minutes because the internet is so slow in these areas. In the end I just managed before dinner.
I might have already mentioned that the Grill is a disappointing concession to Americanise what was previously a splendid restaurant called Restaurant2. Whilst I have no doubt the quality is generally good, the concept is not good and tonight even surpassed itself in poor choices when I was forced to reject the cottage pie, a supposed ‘special’ because it was laden with fatty bits not even fray-bentos would produce! I’m not boasting when I say that my cottage pie is significantly better than this. However the quickly substituted clam chowder, although not New-England authentic, is much better and our mains of lobster thermidor and lamb are lovely and the chocolate layer-cake we shared for pudding was excellent, as was the professional service throughout. We did however chat with a few fellow guests including another blogger on this journey, Eric.
During dinner Captain let us know that the ice was too difficult for the aforementioned channel, so we were reverting to plan A and heading out to open water between the continent and the South Shetlands, which I testify noted by the increased turbulence as I write.
Finally it’s time to write my blog - I'm a slave to my ‘art’ - and hopefully a good nights sleep!
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