Antarctica Ahoy!

Last night, even while I was still awake- we crossed into the Southern Ocean. The guides specifically called it…the Southern Convergence? I'll have to double check later. I'm getting to be late so this will be a short blog post- We had the Captain's Reception Gala so dinner took like 2 hours and then there was a dance show (imagine being a dancer...then imagine being on a dancer on a ship that is being rocked heavily by waves.) It was lovely, and impressive. At one point, the ship was like, "wooooaaAAAAHHHHH I'm tilting!" and I swear ten glasses went "Gravity!" and plummeted to the floor to shatter. A dancer and I both had the 0-0; face except she kept dancing. but since the evening ran long, this shall be short. The first part of the day was at sea. I took a tai chi little warm-up thing, then after breakfast we attended two lectures! one was by C. Alex Young of the Smithsonian group, and the other was by Christine Siddoway of Colorado College. Young's lecture was on the sun and Space Weather in essence (and what we can maybe expect for the solar eclipse) and Siddoway's was about the tectonic plates and geological information that's available to us about Antarctica. Did you know there was like, a sub-plate between South America and Antarctica? (If I recall correctly it's the Skotia plate?) And that's pretty much what made the Drake passage, and why South America and Antarctica have those mirrored curved peninsulas. They were amazing lectures, I'm sorry I can't go into more detail now. As Siddoway's lecture was wrapping up, the captain and expedition team came over the PA and announced that there was an iceberg that could be seen, as well as an Island that is Antarctica! (Basically.) Penguin Island! So all the passengers rush out of the lecture hall and to our rooms to grab out Parkas and some warm clothes and cameras and ta-da!

Our first sighting of ice in Antarctica. Little Icerbergs (also known as Bergy Bits) would float by us as we made our approach to Penguin Island, and I have some nice ones of those, but for time sake, this is what you get. So we made it! We're in Antarctica, we've made it to some sort of land, and soon we'll be able to get boots on ground.... ....

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well except...

So, our expedition is broken up into groups.

Red, Yellow, Blue, Green. Red went first, and they even landed on the island! But then yellow went and......about half of them made it. The weather started turning, waves started picking up, and the landing was cancelled for the rest of the folk. It was hard to be mad though when we saw how soaked some of the people were coming back from the Island. Cricket and I, my roommate for this trip, could see the whole thing from our balcony. And at one point we saw (and I took a picture) of a wave just dumping onto the little boat. And then we saw it like, 15 more times. Same boat, then different boats, but the boats returning were struggling. If they crawled along, it was possible to not have a wave crash over you.... or, maybe more likely to...because everyone got waved once. So my landing (and like 80 other people) was cancelled.

Unfortunate, buuut we've got several more days. So instead, a majority of us hit the various bars on ship, chatted, drank. I brought my camera to take pictures because I had my zoom lens, so I could.

So I did see Penguins on Penguin Island....I was just....on the boat still. Then the ship was moving to our stop for tomorrow - Elephant Island. For Elephant Seals. So, I see that we're turning and I wanted to take a picture of like, and ice sheet on King George Island- and holy moly the ship is turning fast. Now it's already behind the ship! Ahhh! I run to the aft of the ship, camera in hand, and am taking pictures of this part of the island. Then I see a Skua, start taking pictures of that

then

*bwooosh!* I see the unmistakeable puff of a blowhole. It's not a humpback, it's a Minke Whale, but it's right there! I've got my camera, and I'm the only person around. Everyone else is drinking! I manage to take a few shots during it's second surface, but they take their second breath and they disappear.

And despite my best looking, I didn't see them again. After that, it was killing time until the Captain's gala. I'll bore you with the details later. Night! I hope you have whaley good sleep.