Antarctica - Chiriguano Bay

We arrived this morning at Chiriguano Bay. It is another inlet from the ocean surrounded by mountains covered by glacial ice. There is quite a few icebergs and ice floating around the bay. Our ship does not drop anchor, but keeps its position with GPS, radar and the stabilizers to stay away from the larger icebergs.
Our first excursion was on the Zodiac to explore the Bay and our guide explained the geology, formation of the glaciers and how they calve off into the ocean and float away. We were fairly close to the glacier walls in a few places. The sun was out and the bay was full of white ice, blue skies and smooth water to make our outing just about as perfect at it gets.
Our afternoon is the submarine ride.... And it was amazing. We leave the ship on a Zodiac and then 6 of us transfer over to the submarine one at a time, going down the hatch and into our individual seat. Then the pilot comes on board, locks down the hatch and explains all the safety rules. They rotate the seats so that we can see out of the curved glass walls. It was not scary at all since you are looking out and it's sort of looking into a giant aquarium. We descended to about 300 meters, or about 1000 feet. The descent was slow and you get to understand how the light is different under the water. Our usual bright red vests looked grey since the light waves for the color red don't penetrate through the water and it's all shades of blue. At the bottom the lights showed us star fish, tubular animals and underwater spiders. There were lots of animals along the way since there aren't any natural predators in Antarctica to eat them. We then moved to a 'wall' that is an extension of the land mass from up above, just that from the water it's all white glacier and under the water it's a glacier wall with silt from the land and animals growing along the slope. We followed the wall up for a while and saw more of the starfish, ferns, tubular animals and a few fish. Then back on the surface, careful not to rise up on an iceberg or loose glacial ice in the bay. And then to top off the day, Scott was in the room, heard noise at the window and there were two humpback whales right outside the window. Got an awesome movie. Of course he then ran out of the room to go out on deck, in sleet and snow, in a light jacket with no gloves, to chase the whales.Read more