We had sailed away from the South Shetland Islands and were now along the continent, the Antarctica Pennisula. The plan for today was to take a zodiac cruise in and around Enterprise Island, assuming the weather was good. We had been fortunate to have missed a major storm that had just come through Drake passage. We were now experiencing the remnants of it. We were to awake at 5:30am so we could be out on the water by 6:15am. We awoke during the wee hours, Becky took a look outside and it was snowing. We thought we would be sleeping in instead of going out on the zodiacs. No such luck. At 5:30am we had our wake-up call over the loud speaker. The zodiac cruise was still on, snow or no snow. As I mentioned before, every morning we have wake-up calls over the loud speaker. The expedition leader tells us Good Morning and reminds us of the first activity for which we need to prepare. It's loud and annoying.
Becky was not feeling up to the event, but I went ahead. It was snowing. We cruised around looking at the ice bergs and the surronding landscape of Enterprise Island. All I have to say is there is a lot of ice, everywhere. We did explore an old shipwreck from 1914. It was an iron ship that got stuck and hasn't moved since. There were two sailboats that had moored against it. We were told that private vessels often come to Antarctica. They are usually interested in snow boarding, skiing, or in many cases mountaineering.
After getting back to the ship, we set sail for a scenic cruise along the Wilhelmina Bay. We were on our way to our next point of interest, Neko Harbor. It wasn't the best day for a scenic cruise. Although it had stopped snowing, it was still gray. Again we saw a lot of ice. We also saw a number of seals, resting on ice! Ice, ice, ice!
We arrived at Neko Harbor in the afternoon. We enjoyed a scenic hike and we had to make quite a climb to a lookout point. The view was spectacular. It turned out to be my favorite viewpoint on the trip. There was the gray sky above. Down below there were bits of white ice floating on the cold blue water. Surrounding the bay were mountains covered in snow and ice, accented by the bare gray rock poking out. You really felt that you were in Antarctica.
At the top of the viewpoint you could look down into a calfing glacier. The glacier made a groaning sound and sometimes a chunk of ice would fall into the water. This was our only stop on the actual continent, and for some people this was their seventh continent. They had finally made it to every continent.
Fortunately we did not have to walk all the way back down. We could slide down the hill on our jackets. One section of the hill was quite steep. The ship's doctor was telling us how we should position our bodies. He said it was easier to deal with broken bones then a head injury.
In the evening we went to Danco Island, Becky stayed back on the ship. It was a steep climb up to the top where we had a 360 degree view. It was fine but I thought Neko Harbor had a more spectacular view. Many of the passengers wanted everyone to be silent so they could lie down and take in the atmosphere. I didn't know what was going on at first, so I kept walking around crunching through the snow, probably irritating them. Finally I figured it out and laid down in the snow with the rest of them. Just me, Antarctica and 20-30 of my closest friends. Danco Island had several large penguin rookeries, 50-75 penguins each. We were there during the hatching season. We could see the recently hatched penguin chicks poking their heads out from underneath their mothers/fathers.
And that's all that happened on Jan. 4, 2010
Zodiac cruising near Enterprise Island
Old Shipwreck at Enterprise Island
Glacier Ice
Ice Pattern
Seals on Ice (Wilhelmina Bay)
Iceberg (Wilhelmina Bay)
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