Today, we were awoken by bright sunshine streaming through our window at 4:30 AM. It was nice to finally have a really sunny morning but it was very bright and way too early for the sun to be that intense. We almost used our electric blind on the large window to block out the sun, but did not, just closing our shear curtain instead.
Heading Toward Neko Harbour
At a much more reasonable 6:15 AM, I got up and showered. Then I headed to the World Cafe for breakfast as Stephanie slept in.
Today we are heading into an area called Neko Harbor, and we will actually set foot on the mainland of Antarctica. We are not scheduled to arrive until 1:00 PM, but will be there until 8:00 PM.
It was a pretty spectacular cruise into a long bay that looked like the shape of a boot, sort of like Italy, but the boot shape was the water, not the land. As we got further up into the bay, the floating ice increased dramatically, and the ship was having to use thrusters to maneuver around them as we progressed to the end of the bay. There were glaciers on the mountains surrounding the bay, and that was the reason for all of the floating ice, it was breaking off over time and filling the bay with ice, large sized chunks to very small sized pieces.
Beautiful Icebergs
With the sunshine, and fairly calm winds, the floating ice was pretty beautiful. Each one we passed almost seemed more beautiful than the one before. Needless to say, we got a lot of photos of floating ice from our open window.
After Stephanie got up and got ready, we headed back to the World Cafe for her breakfast. I just enjoyed a cup of coffee while she ate, knowing that we had a long time before our Special Ops Boat excursion at 2:45 PM, plenty of time to “purge” the coffee.
Another Expedition Ship
After breakfast, we headed back to the room to get some additional clothing so we could spend time outside in the sunshine watching the ice float by. It was still about 35 degrees outside, but felt warmer n the sunshine.
We headed in to eat lunch about 12:15 PM in the World Cafe. Everyone was just amazed at all of the ice and beautiful scenery.
We were back on deck when we arrived at the landing site. It looked really small from the ship, but once the excursion guides went over with their equipment we now had a scale for size and the people looked tiny, so we knew it was a large landing area, it just did not look that big against all of the mountains.
Glacier Calving
There was a glacier right next to the landing site, and we were told multiple time we would not be able to linger on the beach in case some ice calved off the glacier and caused some large waves. We actually saw two different pieces of the glacier fall off while we were looking out our window, the sun was at full height, and apparently was causing some of the ice to melt and fall off the glacier face. There were couple of times ice and snow broke away over large rock face, but that did not fall all the way into the water, but was quite loud.
Penguins Swimming
We got ready for our excursion and headed down to the meeting area near The Hanger. It is aways interesting to see how dumb people can be. The tour organizer was trying to call one couple because they were late, and they told her they were not going on the excursions.
We all started to get ready and all of a sudden they showed up anyway, and had not understood that the lady was calling about this tour, they thought it was for something else. However, they were really not ready, they did not have the audio devices, and did not have their lifejackets on, and the lady had to help them get their jackets on, like they had never done it before.
Then they wanted to take the elevator down the two floors to the boarding area, so now they were first in line to board and get the better front seats. Go figure…..they did not even offer to let others who had been there on time and before them to get onto the boat first.
Leopard Seal
It was an interesting ride, there was so much ice that we could not go fast and had to maneuver around the ice pieces. We did see a lot of swimming penguins and some seals laying on the ice. One of them was a leopard seal, which are more rare to see than the fur seals. We were given some interesting information on the types of ice and the sizes, they all have names to designate them by size.
We did not get to go far on the tour, there was just too much ice to go fast, but it was still a nice ride and was not cold because we never went fast.
Minke Whale Near A Zodiac
We headed back to the room and just sat at our window hoping to see more ice fall off the glacier face, but it never did. I had just put my camera ger away to get ready for our excursion when a whale surfaced right under our window. I rushed to get out the camera again, and the whale just hung out by one of the Zodiac boats heading over to the shoreline. Someone shouted out that it was a Minke whale. It was smaller than a humpback whale, and seemed really interested in the Zodiac boats. It came up right next to one that was heading out, and we had already seen Dennis and Lisa ion it and taken their picture from our window.
Minke Whale
The whale surfaced right next to the side of the Zodiac and blew out its breath right onto everyone on the boat, including Dennis and Lisa. We got some great shots of all of this from our open window above.
We needed to get dressed for our Zodiac landing, so we put away all of the camera equipment and got ready. We headed down a little early hoping to be able to see the whale from our Zodiac since it was just hanging out near the ship.
We boarded our Zodiac, but our driver headed straight over to the landing spot, apparently, all of the landing boats were getting behind schedule while trying to observe the Minke whale.
Penguins On The Rocky Shoreline
The landing area was quite rocky, and it was a little more difficult to walk on than any of the other areas we had landed on to date. We headed up the beach into the snow. There were two trails marked out, one went to a nesting area on the left, and was not long. We did that one first. There were quite a lot of penguin trails in the snow, they constantly walk in the same places and it makes little ditches that become their pathways. We had to stop a few times to let the penguins cross our path. It was really interesting, but the smell was quite strong and bad.
Nesting Penguins
At the end of the trail, we were able to see a lot of penguin nests made of small pebbles. There were still some eggs in a couple of nests, and it was really late in the season, so they were not going to survive, the penguins will need to leave for the winter before these chicks would be old enough. There were also some small chicks that also might not survive because they were just too young this late in the season.
We then headed back to the landing site to get some walking sticks for the other path. We saw Dennis and Lisa on the first trail and they said the walking sticks really helped on the steeper trail, especially going downhill on the slick snow/ice/poop mixture.
Gentoo Penguins
It was quite a climb up to the top to see another nesting area of penguins. The views were pretty spectacular. Another couple asked us to take their pictures and we obliged, of course asking them to return the favor and take our picture with our flags. We had some other people arrive and sort of block off the good background, but we patiently waited and they finally left. We actually asked the other couple to let us retake their photos now that people were not standing next to them in their pictures, oblivious to the fact we were taking photos.
We stayed for a little while longer, just taking in the views. Unfortunately, it had gotten cloudy later in the afternoon, so it was not as nice for photos with the white ice against the grayer sky, but it was still beautiful.
Penguin Highway
Now it was time to head down the snow trail to the bottom. It was a little slippery in spots, but we tried to stay off to the side in the less packed down snow. It was still a little treacherous, but we made it down without incident, Falling down would not be bad except for the penguin poop on the trails, that would make for a smelly fall. We were glad we each had at least the one walking stick for stability.
We had to stop at one point, there were several penguin trails crossing our walking trail, and the penguins have the right of way. There were guides to make sure we stopped when any penguins were making their way across our trail.
Our Flags at Neko Harbour
At the bottom, we turned in our walking sticks and washed off our boots near the water. It was already 6:45 PM, and we had been at the landing area past our allotted time, but it did not seem to matter.
The guides had to really help one lady walk through the rocky beach back to the Zodiac. She admitted to having some severe spine issues, and she could barely make it through the large rocks, even with the assistance of two guides. They brought back in one Zodiac that was not quite full, and the lady and her husband boarded. They had to actually lift her legs up and over the side of the Zodiac so she could rotate and turn inwards.
Our Zodiac At The Champagne Stop
She seemed to be in a lot of pain. Stephanie and I thought how in the world had she had gotten medical clearance for this trip. Either it really does not matter, or someone had said she was more fit than she was so she could go. We guessed she might not have done other landings, but wanted to do this on since we were really on the mainland of Antarctica.
We waited on the next Zodiac to come and 10 people boarded. On the way back to the ship, we stopped at another Zodiac near the ship and everyone was given a small sip of champagne to celebrate our actual landing on mainland Antarctica.
Pre Dinner Wine At The Explorer’s Lounge
By the time we got back to the room it was already 7:00 PM. We went ahead and took showers so that task was done for the evening. Afterwards, we headed to the Explorer’s Lounge for a glass of wine and then went to dinner before the World Cafe stopped serving food.
While we were at dinner, they announced they were serving Baily’s and Hot Chocolate on the bow as we were sailing away. We headed to the room to get more clothes and then went to the bow. It was nice, there was hardly any wind.
Sighting Whales As We Are Leaving Neko Harbour
There were quite a few whales swimming nearby and several groups of penguins. I had told Stephanie that we were done with photos for the day when we got back from our landing, but apparently not, I had to go back to the room for a camera because there were several great photo opportunities as we passed by the large icebergs.
The water was really smooth and the reflections of the ice and mountains was really nice. There was a lot of floating ice initially, but it thinned out as we proceeded out of the bay area for Neko Harbour.
Beautiful Reflections
We headed back to the room to drop off the photo gear and extra clothing and then went back to the Explorer’s Lounge for a nightcap. We enjoyed talking some with Dennis and Lisa and Robert and Martha. The bar was going to stay open an hour later than normal because of the late departure. However, at around 10:45 PM, the bridge shut down all but some essential lighting. There is apparently a lot of reflective lighting from this bar with all of the panoramic glass and it causes issues with night vision on the bridge.
We had a wonderful day, and called it a night about 11:00 PM. When we got back to the cabin we could see two other ships on the horizon. One had a really bright and powerful spotlight, obviously using that for navigating through the ice, the other looked like a normal cruise/expedition ship.
We do not have anything scheduled until 9:15 AM tomorrow morning so we get to sleep in a little.