Antarctica Cruise Day 9

Today we had scheduled activities in the morning and in the afternoon.

In the morning after breakfast we were at Danco Island. The weather conditions were good, and knowing tomorrow is our last day of expeditions with sketchy weather forecast, we decided to kayak because it might be the last time. The session started off well. The sea was calm, so was the wind, and we saw a minke whale soon after paddling up towards the island. There were Gentoo penguins swimming all around us as well. We followed the whale for a little while and made to continue around the right side of the island, but the wind and current were stronger on that side, so we went back the way we came. We caught a glacier crumbling into the ocean and heard the thunder of more cracks being made. Rex talked us through ice erosion that takes place due to factors such as water, but also bubble erosion which is unique to ice. We paddled around a little bit more, but the wind was picking up making it difficult to keep on course. Allan and I also had pretty cold hands, and not seeing anything on the water got a bit boring for us after a while with also feeling cold. We much prefer the freedom and what you can see from land rather than kayaking for fun in wind and cold. We were glad when we made to go back to the ship. After a rough time trying to stay straight and not be driven back into the ship for landing, we made it back onboard. Kayaking three times this trip was two more than we thought we'd get to do, so that was a positive.

We had some downtime before lunch and some more after lunch. We stayed anchored at Danco until after lunch when we made the short trip to Orne Bay. At this location we were looking for chinstrap penguins. We made the steep climb up wondering when we would spot them. We could hear them, but not really see anything. We reached the top and walked along the back side of the ridge and then we saw a few spatterings on penguins. We also saw a penguin highway on the back side of the hill going down to the ocean. It's a fair distance for the kittle penguins! The chinstraps were in small groups on clusters of rocks going all the way up a mountain. We saw a few, and then made our way back down the hill. I've been pretty pleased I haven't slipped going down any of these snowy, icy hills.

The ice has really blown across the bay, so we couldn't go on a zodiac exploration. On our way back to the boat in the zodiac we did see more chinstraps on their rocky outcroppings along the sea cliffs. We made our way through the soupy ice and got back onboard. After having small sand particles in my boots once after a check, I've been really paranoid about cleaning them, so I was the last one to finish. We had about an hour before our briefing so we read a bit.

During the briefing we were reminded that tomorrow is our last day before we begin making our way back across the Drake. I can't believe how much we've packed into the last week and a bit, but I'll also be sad to leave Antarctica behind.Read more