Antarctica Cruise Day 4

🎄 Merry Christmas! 🎄

We definitely felt the earlier wake up call for breakfast after staying up late last night.

After breakfast, we got dressed in our layers and waited for our group, Wendell, to be called down to the mudroom. Once we got called and made our way down, it was pretty quick. We got our boots on, stepped in the vercon disinfectant, scanned out and we're in the zodiac.

Before we made to land on Detaille Island, we drove around for a little while in the zodiac. We saw some birds, and up high on a cliff there was a rookery of adelie penguins, too high to get a picture though. We saw some very blue ice and learned that this is because of the air bubbles in the ice. Apparently you can also find green ice and red ice in Antarctica. We went around the corner of the island and spotted some fur seals. There were 4 of them, mostly sleeping, but one was looking right at us. Sofia, the girl driving our zodiac, went too shallow at one point and our engine cut out...we were quickly drifting towards the coast where the seals were. We definitely didn't keep our 5m of distance while she calmly, but quickly tried to work out why her engine wouldn't start. After fiddling with some things, the battery had become partially disconnected, so once reconnected we reversed and went to the landing site.

On the island we walked over to the Basecamp W hut. Because the people stationed here left in such a hurry (they had 2 hours to pack and get to the nearby ship that failed to deliver winter supplies), it is preserved in a way that shows how they lived in the hut. We saw blankets on beds, tins in the cupboards, and journals and notes scattered around. It was really fascinating and eye opening to how these research stations operated and the kind of living conditions for the scientists. They certainly didn't live comfortably. We left the hut, and continued to a small viewpoint on our way back to the landing site.

Back on board, we cleaned our boots, sanitized them, and had a cup of tea before lunch. After our excursion, the next goal was trying to pass 'The Gullet', a narrow opening that tends to be filled with pack ice and icebergs. After exploring the area for a few hours it became clear the the ice was foo densely packed in the gullet, so we turned back to go around Adelaide Island. This meant that we had some free time this afternoon that we didn't spend out on the deck to look at the passing ice in the gullet. Before we left to go back around Adelaide Island, we had a quick group picture to mark our crossing the Antarctic Circle.

After a shower post group picture, we went to a lecture on Shackleton and his expedition. His goal was to cross the entire continent. He called it 'The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition'. He purchased two ships, one to get to the side he would use to arrive and one at the other side once they cross the continent. Shackleton was a bit of a dodgy guy, and was terrible with money, but always optimistic when it came to sailing south. He was also very good at motivating people who felt hopeless. He had 27 crew members on the Endurance with him and 67 dogs (not including the puppies born onboard) and Mrs. Chippy, the cat. The dogs were there to pull the sleds and had funny names like 'Slippery Nick'. After two weeks, they got stuck in pack ice, and for nine months drifted around stuck. On October 27, 1915, 9 months after starting, the ship is crushed and sunk. They then have to live on the pack ice that trapped them. The ice opens up and they sail to Elephant Island (but was aiming for Deception Island). Shackleton takes 5 people with him to get to South Georgia and the other 22 stay at Elephant Island. Shackleton made it to South Georgia, and after 4 tries he made it back to Elephant Island and threw cigarettes into the shore that the crew really appreciated. They all made it back (except the dogs).

After our lecture we had our briefing and recap. Tomorrow we are visiting two islands and we are trying to outrun the storm that's been chasing us since we left. It was also snowing which means we officially had a white Christmas! We joined in with a game of Antarctic Bluff after dinner trying to guess the correct definition of different Antarctic words like 'crumping' and 'hogmadog'. They were pretty weird words and the two lies and a truth were all pretty convincing with their definitions. After the game we went down to the sauna for a bit. I found it a little off-putting being in the hot sauna and swaying with the waves, so I didn't do a full second round of 10 minutes, but I wasn't far off! The rest of the evening before bed was pretty calm. I had downloaded a Christmas movie before we left, so watched half of it before trying to get some sleep before our big day tomorrow.Read more