So, my notes from yesterday. This post is going to be all over the place a bit.
Supposedly on the last cruise down here in December they only saw a single seal. Now I’m seeing photo posts of multiple in multiple locations (I have one myself).
Yesterday we started at Palmer Station, paid a visit to Port Lockroy, did some scenic cruising through Nemaire Channel and sat at the base of a glacier in a floating field of bergy bits for a while playing chicken with Seaborn Journey (I have some fun photos of that), circled most of Wincke Island…. The original plan was for us to overnight in Paradise Harbor (I believe this is still the plan) but we were to spend the afternoon not in Nemaire Channel. The weather changed though – it was sunny and in the upper 30s (maybe 3 or 4C). It has been great for walking the deck.
There had been some flurries and mild snow squals but it was mostly peaceful until after bedtime. Darkness fell sometime after midnight (I wouldn’t really know, I wasn’t awake, but around 2:45am I saw light outside even though sunrise is around 4am).
Last night instead of Paradise Bay (supposedly there was ice) we were situated in a strait somewhere south of Dallmann Bay with the intention of visiting Cuverville Island, Dallmann Bay, and Wilhelmina Bay tomorrow, in that order. Obviously that’s the intention. Today’s reality was slightly different than planned – we did not visit Paradise Bay due to ice and we did not visit Lameire Channel due to ice. However, Palmer Island and Port Lockroy had plenty of penguins – that was this morning. Then we had a face-off with a Seabourn ship. Otherwise, the Captain spent the day driving around…
Around 4:30 yesterday afternoon I was napping in my cabin to the pleasant sounds of the bow camera on the television when suddenly the captain put on full thrusters – slamming on the brakes, as it were, as we feel this quite well on the stern. I thought, “Uh oh, something is going to happen.” Captain gets on the horn and tells us all we’re approaching a pod of killer whales! Now according to The Boss who was in the Crows Nest at the time everyone from the Crows Nest suddenly rushed the windows and there was no seeing anything. It was absolute mayhem. I went back to sleep though. She went out to the bow and looked for killer whales and sure enough there they were and penguins started flying out of the water trying to get away! Some got eaten…
As you can tell I’m not the most fanatical about wildlife sighting but I’m not the least fanatical either. I’ll share now a samping of photos.
This is from when we came back from an hour in the casino after dinner. The light is really surreal here. Also, from the veranda the ship was mostly silent and the waterwas still, at least for a few minutes. I guess we’ve found our place to sit for the night.
There were icebergs and masses of ice everywhere, but none too close. We later learned (today) that a Seabourn ship and another expedition ship came and hoovered in Dallmann Bay with us. Turns ou the Seabourn captain was a crewmate with Captain Kevin on the Konigsdam a few years back before Captain Kevin took the helm on this ship. Yesterday afternoon, as other guests put it, we attempted a “kiss” with the Seabourn ship.
I mean, we were really close.
REALLY close.
I don’t know who these guests are.
We visited a couple of different penguin rookeries yesterday. First was the gathering at Palmer Station.
You really couldn’t see them well there as we were fairly distant, but this was our first stop in Antarctica. In some years the Palmer Station scientists send a zodiac out and exchange supplies and occasionally give a short talk, but for us this was not to be this year.
After Palmer Station we had time to freshen up a bit before our stop at Port Lockroy where there were massive amounts of penguins.
Lockroy is popular with smaller expedition ships as well as sailing yachts. I think we probably saw five or six sailing yachts yesterday.
The station there was founded by the British during the middle part of the 20th century but then was abandoned for a number of years until a preservation group showed up in the 1990s to restore it. Now there is a small museum, shop, and post office. They have no boats though so they rely on others for transport.
This is actually an outbuilding at Port Lockroy. You see some zodiacs buzzing around dropping passengers off. Penguins appear to be nonplussed.
As you can see there are penguins everywhere.
They are actually a lot denser than this in many places, but here they sort of look like our greyhound at home. They just sort of stand around looking at people wondering why they’re there.
Later in the day we went on a sailing expedition to another point in the bays which is where we encountered the Seabourn ship.
Anyway. The Antarctic days (four of them) are lightly scheduled as far as entertainment activities go. There was only one talk scheduled yesterday. Today (spoiler alert) there were three. The Rolling Stone Band was largely off . There was a show on the main stage today – a stringed instrument player. For the record, we haven’t seen any main stage shows yet, but we intend to see the mentalist tonight. We’ve been more focused on catching snippets of shows elsewhere and going to bed early so we can wake up early. We’ve been up between 5:30 and 7 most days for the past two weeks compared to my usual 6:30 on weekdays and 7 or 8 on weekends.
We did spend a good chunk of the day looking at wildlife, one of us more seriously than the other. My mother spent probably eight or nine hours today at various places out on deck with a camera (I spent about 3 or 4). The weather wasn’t bad for it yesterday. Sunday’s weather would have been brutal. So, to some degree we lucked out, but I’ve seen people say this in reports regarding most all of the Oosterdam’s pastAntarctic cruises going back two years.
Nothing exciting in the dining room today, but nothing bad either. It was a good day. We played some blackjack and came out even and The Boss taught me to play craps and I came out way ahead.
In Retrospect 