December 30, Friday – Drakes Passage and Antarctica

Drake's Passage is notorious for it's extremely rough seas.  However, we have been blessed by the Travel Weather Gods.   The transit across the passage to Antarctica was so smooth that we arrived in Antarctica a half day early.  Consequently we got to do extra cruising through some of the passages at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.  

Everyone mobbed the front deck for a first glimpse of Antarctica.

Can you find Paul...Center top, tan pants, black jacket, black and white scarf.

Watch  video in a new large window

It was pretty chilly out all day, a high of 32 degrees F (0 degrees C) but Paul really bundled up and spent lots of time out on deck taking pictures and marveling at the glorious views..

Here we cruised right by a very large iceberg.

The sky was crystal clear blue with hardly a cloud to be seen.  And the water was blue.  And the glaciers were blue (and white).  It was absolutely magical and breathtaking.  There are no adjectives adequate enough to describe how incredibly beautiful it is.  We had a terrible time culling pictures of this Blue (and white) continent so here are bunches of our favorite images.

In some areas the water was so calm that we got almost perfect reflections.

We saw a large pod of 15 or 20 orcas (hard to get a picture of them...they are mostly underwater and you never know where they will pop up)...

Whales (ditto in trying to get images of them)...

We frequently saw seals sunning themselves on ice flows.

No seals on this one but they had obviously been on it...bloody remains.

And there were lots of penguins.  Penguins porpoising through the water...

penguins playing on ice flows...

Penguins around a marker

and even a penguin rookery with a path up a snow covered mountain connecting the ocean and the rookery.  

We saw lots of icebergs of various shapes and sizes...

A Dragon

Bobbing up and down

Icicles

At the end of the day the captain took the ship back outside the channels into open water so that we wouldn't inadvertently end up hitting an iceberg or being trapped in the ice.  We stayed up pretty late enjoying the cruising.  

The ship was still decorated for Christmas.  This is part of a large gingerbread village that was set up in one of the central areas.