Penguins!

We were woken up by the cheerful tones of Mario at 6.30am informing us that our morning excursion was unlikely as we were in the middle of an antarctic blizzard.... Not ideal.

Not ones to be easily put off, we went outside to check out the winds of up to 140km an hour and we ended up having a snowball fight on deck.

Still not even 8am, we buckled down for some card games to pass the time.

In the afternoon, we were given the all clear for our first kayak of the trip. We headed down to the mudroom and got kitted up but unfortunately the wind picked up again and we had to de kit and prepare to head for land (Paradise island) on a zodiac instead.

Don't underestimate the weather here!

On land, we were able to see 3 colonies of Gentoo penguins and complete a short hike up to a viewpoint from where we could see whales bubble wall feeding and a tonne of icebergs.

Unfortunately, camping was also not possible this evening so off to the bar we head for some drinks and live music (yes, the ship has a live musician). This escalated somewhat and I would hazzard a guess that Antarctica has never seen that many people on a ship deck doing the macarena (the conga line was also pretty epic). It's probably also worth noting for everyone else's entertainment that I did full on face plant on the deck after slipping on some ice, leaving some grazes and bruises that will no doubt sting tomorrow but thankfully nothing worse!

After what one might say was too many drinks, we finally tumbled into bed in the early hours of Saturday after so much fun and laughterRead more