Surfing the Drake Channel

Emily is amazing and always up for fun. Last night coming back from dinner, we walked by the indoor swimming pool. Let's just say the going back through the Drake Passage had been much, much rougher and the pool had turned into a literal wave pool. We took one look at each other, ran back to our room to put on swim suits, and hurried back in case they decided to close the pool. Good news--they didn't and we spent the next hour body surfing the huge waves. One guy, Anton, saw how much fun we were having and jumped in too. What an unexpected adventure! (this morning, the pool has been closed. Glad we grabbed the chance when we could).
I'm currently sitting on a lounge chair at the bow 14 stories up, watching the ship take on gigantic waves. Not scary but incredible to see the power of water.
Yesterday, we had a huge snowstorm all day. All the decks were closed and it wasn't clear if we were going to be able to get to our next stop, Elephant Island (named for all the Elephant Seals that inhabit the island.) Around 4pm, the cruise Director announced we were approaching it and to come inside to the viewing areas in case things cleared up enough to see. Our cabin was on the opposite side so Em and I bundled up to go see what we could on the other side of the ship.
We discovered that the pool deck was open so we braved the 60 mph winds to see what we could.
We could barely see Elephant Island when all of a sudden, the snow storm stopped and the sun came out. We saw an iceberg floating by with a while colony of Penguins and I saw a bunch of seals popping their heads up in the water. No pictures of them... Too rocky and too cold to hold the phone but I grabbed a few of the scenery.
After, we headed into the observation lounge to grab hot chocolate and to listen to the naturalist. Cool stuff!Read more