A28a and whales

A28a I suspect will be the focus to day. It is still a day at sea, but at least one with an Antarctic highlight. Last night one person over dinner was keen to get up early, I wasn't quite sure why because I knew we would be sailing past the iceberg for a few hours. He said he wanted to see the corner! We are up at a reasonable time anyway and the ship hasn't traveled as far as expected so it's going to be another couple of hours before we reach A28a. We are extremely lucky with the weather and the giants iceberg glistens in the sun, the colors vary from pale green to very white.

Mid-morning our schedule is changed, the captain announces that the iceberg is near and he knows everyone will be outside. He also tells us about whales in the area. Everyone by this stage is up on the deck keen for their first glance of the world's largest iceberg. It really is massive. We're given statistics but they mean so little when you have something that big it's just very hard to grasp how big to say nothing of what we can't see below water level. For the moment everyone is focused on the iceberg and not on the whales.

As our attention drifts away from the iceberg, we start to focus more blows around the ship. We are still all looking at the iceberg when people start to notice the whales are coming closer to the ship, suddenly no one is interested in A28a anymore. Everyone is trying to get the best photo of a whale, preferably with an iceberg in the background. There are so many and they are so close. We can see them coming up to the surface around us. They are so close that we can hear the blow which is really loud. We can also hear other noises that these huge creatures make at one point, unfortunately I managed to get a picture of a tail flip but it's so small not the one up in the air right in front of us. It was quite an extraordinary morning. They are with us for more than an hour. I have never seen whales that close. The ocean is quite dark making seeing the back of a whale quite difficult. Even more difficult to see in a photo.

We are told later how unusual this was, to see so many. The explanation is that as the iceberg moves it stirs up sediment from the bottom and the whales are feeding on what is in the sediment. We were watching fin and humpback whales. One of the guides who had been in this area many times said he had never experienced anything like it, we were very lucky and it was a beautiful sunny day. The sun glistened off the iceberg while we watched whales in the water.

We continued along the length of the iceberg and it would have been 2 to 3 hours before we reached its end. By the time we got to the end, there was evidence of the iceberg breaking up with pieces floating in the ocean past the ship. This reminds me of Disco Bay Greenland. The map shows approximately where the iceberg was in relation to South Georgia.

Our lecture in the afternoon was on Shackleton in good preparation for our landing on South Georgia. The naturalist presenting used photographs from the photographer who was part of the expedition. This made the presentation really interesting. The photographer took pictures of the men, the ship, the dogs and the landscape. Shackleton preferred to be in the wild with just men, no women. When he died on the base of a heart attack, his body as was the custom was sent back to England, however, his widow sent his body back to South Georgia to be buried. Not sure if this was because he had spent so much time away from the family she didn't care where he was buried or whether it was because she knew how much he loved this continent.

In the evening we decide we will spend a little time in the main lounge and watch the Peruvian dancer and listen to the guitar player. We normally don't bother with the entertainment because we are too tired but tonight we do and it was worthwhile. The guitarist very talented and seems to be able to make the guitar sing. The dancer at one point dances with a pot on her head spinning around how good it would be to have such balance.Read more