Today was breathtaking. Spectacular. In the word(words?) of Dan, unbefuckingleivable!!!
We started the morning before everyone else with a panicked visit to the gift shop, our waterproof pants were decidedly not. After, sigh of relief, getting a pair each we went out on our first zodiac excursion to Kinne’s Cove. We motored around lots of floating sea ice. Depending on what I’m not sure, but some pieces would glow softly blue, it was surreal. Then we went to a small rocky island and saw our first up close penguins. There were many Adelie penguins and a singular Gentoo penguin. The Adelie are adorable with a black beak and a white ring around their eyes. The Gentoos have an orange beak with white splotches on their head, they also are a little bigger. We enjoyed penguin antics for awhile, amazing! They have such personality! It was fun watching them get into groups anxiously trying to get up the nerve to go in the ocean, where the leopard seals lurk. Once the first one went, it became an avalanche of penguins. We returned to the ship for a lunch and a warm up, then it was off to the continent. Brown Bluff was where we landed next by zodiac, on the Antarctica continent. The cliffs we’re formed by underwater volcanos giving it it’s brown color as well as continental plate dynamics. From there we could walk to the South Pole if we wanted to and had the dumb luck of the early pioneers, well at least until Darwin won. There were giant cliffs and a small Gentoo breeding colony. A few had chicks just days old and they would sit on them, completely covering them and protecting them from the cold. Walking down the beach, we then saw the Adelie colony, it was huge. Or so we thought, then we looked farther, and farther, and farther, it just kept going! Tens of thousands of penguins, so so many! We started by sitting on the beach by some penguins. We stayed very still and got rewarded with a walk by! We did this a few times and got quite a few curious penguins wondering why there were giant neon yellow blobs on their beach. We then explored the edge of the colony and the Adelie had hatched their young earlier so we saw many a dark gray youngster. They lay two eggs and if lucky, both make it to fledgling without being eating by a Skua, a predator bird. The little ones were adorable, fluffy and needy, mom or dad feeding them when they finally got loud enough. After that we went on a zodiac excursion, morning around icebergs and watching penguin antics on them. They are so funny when walking on ice, slipping and sliding. It was just so fun to watch, we really loved it. That night we came back and found out because of heavy ice, we would not be making it below the Antarctica circle but instead would be going to the east side of the Antarctica peninsula for a few days, a rare treat. We then hung out with our new best friends and watched the most glorious sunset of my life, it lasted 3 hours, the landscape painted in oranges and pinks with the ever present glowing blue ice bergs. Words cannot describe