So yesterday I had a pretty amazing men’s facial, shave, and haircut, not necessarily in that order.
The original plan was for us to arrive at Deception Island around 6:30pm. As it seemed we were running late, I went up to the spa and asked if they could smash my two appointments together and begin at 6pm, and they accommodated.
It was great. I pre-booked these appointments over a month ago following on someone’s advice – Antarctic nights tend to be fairly calm and the expedition team and Captain go off duty so it isn’t a horrible time to book services as they are discounted. My appointment dragged on a while though. We were done at 8pm so our options for dinner were room service or wait for late night dining to open or take advantage of the Neptune Lounge. We chose the lounge option as we are now on the “two meals a day” plan anyway.
I still managed to snap a few photos. I barely went outside in the evening, though.
Panorama view.
Others did go outside.
Today’s two meals are Pinnacle Grill breakfast (asian congee) and Pinnacle Grill dinner. Hopefully the boat doesn’t rock too much.
Anyway, I captured a handful of photos of Deception Island during and after my spa appointment. I wasn’t going to go outside for long, though, as there was an incredibly strong wind. Deception Island seems very desolate, and now that we were away from the peninsula where less precipitation falls it didn’t necessarily seem the same. I think Deception Island is a place where you need an expedition ship to enter the caldera and hopefully get off the ship a bit to see properly.
We spent the night moving from Deception Island to King George Island. Before we went to bed, we went out on our veranda and realized the waves were coming from behind; this made sense as there was a 30 knot wind from the southwest and we were moving to the northeast. End result was there were occasional thud noises as waves hit the flat stern of the ship.
Blue in the morning!
More penguins!
Leaving blue waters behind
This morning was our final scenic touring which started in one arm of Admiralty Bay and moved around considerably. Again, like last night, at 7am conditions on the bow were rather inhospitable, but this didn’t stop me from catching some photos of the blue waters of the bay.
Eventually we moved on from our first stop and caught some sunshine and conditions improved – we spent probably an hour parked at the base of a very large glacier where we were witnessed to a decent sized calving of a glacier followed by a couple hours of slow sailing through the bay past multiple research bases –
the Peruvian,
Uruguayan,
and Brazilian research bases, and then to return. By noon we were leaving the mouth of the bay and heading to sea.
So how do I rate our Antarctic experience? Honestly, I do think it was better than expected. Even though there were three days where half the day had absolutely miserable weather, the rest of the time the weather was fairly decent. We saw most of our penguin wildlife early in the stay. We saw a lot more whales than I was expected (perhaps into the hundreds if you were out there for most of it). We saw fewer seals and sea lions than I expected. And there were more ships and boats down here than I was expecting.
Conditions on the Drake headed south were reasonable. On the north remains to be seen but doesn’t look as if it’s going to be apopalyptic. Internet connectivity has been good, and there have been things to do.
We finally hit our groove as far as getting enough sleep and attaining a healthy groove of dining and fasting and exercise. I’ve replaced some of my workouts with walking the promenade instead of using the treadmill. One note – I tried the fitness classes; I don’t really like them here.
Anyway, northward.
