South America and Antarctica

We had another early start today. The captain’s plan for this morning was to pass through Neptune’s Bellows at around 6:30am to enter Port Foster in the caldera of Deception Island, so we wanted to be up to enjoy it. It was a very nice sight and worth getting up for.

Once we were inside the ring of the volcanic crater the plan was to make an early morning landing on the shore. However, the wind was too strong for us to go ashore. So, the captain decided that we would not stay too long before heading off to Livingston Island to see if we could find a more protected bay.

As we headed for Livingston Island, the wind died down enough for us to take a ride in the helicopter along the coast of Deception Island, which we thoroughly enjoyed. Our pilot told us that we were probably the first non-military and non-scientific people to fly over this part of the world in a helicopter. It made sense, since the only way you can fly in a helicopter here is to bring one with you! The flight was fabulous, as was the landing on the moving ship!

After the helicopter ride we headed to one of the ship’s cafes for lunch (and had the most amazing carrot and ginger soup!). We relaxed only briefly after lunch before we had to get ready to go out in a Zodiac to land on Livingston Island.

Livingston Island has black sand beaches (as a result of volcanic activity) and is home to plenty of seals (both Elephant and Weddell). We stayed on the island for a little while before succumbing to the icy winds and heading back to the ship.

We had hoped to go sea kayaking today but that had been put on hold and it didn’t look like the weather would settle down enough for this to happen . But, around 6 pm we got the call to go. We have never kayaked before and the kayak paperwork that we were required to complete said that experience was required. We reasoned that what we lacked in experience we made up for in enthusiasm, so off we went! Our sea kayaking initiation in the Antarctic Ocean went pretty well and we were surprised by how much we enjoyed it.

We were pretty tired by the time we got back to our room at around 9 pm. But we had enough energy to head out for dinner and we ended up chatting over dinner with a couple of others who had been out kayaking with us.

We are now back in our room, crossing the Drake Passage, on our way back to South America. The swell is about 4m at the moment and we expect it to worsen overnight. The ship is pitching quite a bit now and once we are a little further north, we expect to be hit by strong winds coming from the east. We think we might be in for a pretty rough night!