South America and Antarctica

We slept in a bit this morning but sprung to life when we heard the captain’s morning address come in over the loudspeaker.

After a quick breakfast, Keith went to the gym and Andrea relaxed in the room for a little while. Before we knew it, it was time for lunch. We decided to have an early lunch since we had a few activities planned for the afternoon.

The ship arrived at Half Moon Island early in the afternoon. The weather was not great though, so the afternoon’s activities had to be rescheduled. Our first activity was a helicopter ride over the South Shetland Islands, which was very nice.

We had not much time on our return from the helicopter flight before we had to don our cold weather gear for a trip on a Zodiac onto Half Moon Island. The weather had closed in quite a bit and the sea was pretty rough for our ride to the shore. Once we got there we wandered around a bit, taking in the beautiful views and watching the very cute Chinstrap penguins.

Our ride back to the ship was a little calmer. When we got back we went through a biosecurity wash and inspection before taking off the many layers of cold weather gear we were wearing and changing into something more comfortable. In fact, we were then so comfortable that we decided to have dinner in our room, rather than head out to one of the many restaurants on board. A quick call to our butler saw dinner taken care of and we enjoyed a very nice meal while taking in the view of Antarctica from our balcony window.

We are now sailing again and are on our way to Brown Bluff. The captain expects us to arrive there at 6am tomorrow morning. We’ll be spending the morning there before sailing into the Weddell Sea, where we will stop at Devil Island. Of the Weddell Sea, historian Thomas Henry wrote in 1950: “The Weddell Sea is, according to the testimony of all who have sailed through its berg-filled waters, the most treacherous and dismal area on earth.” Let’s see how we go!

We’re off to bed pretty shortly, after quite a tiring day.