Antarctica 1-30-22

Elephant Island was our first land sighting after passing though Drake Pass.   It is an ice covered mountainous island in outer reaches of the South Shetland Islands. The island is most famous as the desolate refuge of Ernest Shackleton and his crew in 1916.  Everyone should read the book “Endurance” which was ironically the name of Shackleton’s ship. 

This morning was zodiac ride at Point Wild.  Swells were too high to land on island so spent 1 hour riding around this area 

Loading the zodiacs from ship 6 - 8 per zodiac.  

I could watch the lowering of the zodiacs and hoisting back up to top of boat from my balcony.  

Thousands of Chinstrap Penguins.  Above picture you can see colonies…and if we would not have seen them, we smelled them!🤣. All that brown is guano!

Mask helped with smell🐧💩🐧

With the swells it was quite a fun adventure getting in and out of zodiac.   It is warmer than I expected- 34 degrees this AM

This afternoon we zodiac over to Lookout point and docked. It was amazing walking around amongst chinstrap and gentoo penguins. There were also elephant seals lounging around and 2 fur seals jousting for positions on a rock. 

Above is Gentoo penguin and below are Chinstrap penguins 



Above 2 Fir seals.  Fir seals are not true seals but “eared seals (Otarlidae). Differences are they have ear flaps and have long and muscular foreflippers.   They walk on all four unlike true seals that glide across land on belly. 

Below is a fir seal. 

Below is young gentoo penguin that is molting.  The molting penguins we saw were so cute, fluffy and very comical!!

Below elephant seal taking a siesta.  Elephant seals were hunted to the brink of extinction by the end of the 19th century but luckily their numbers have since recovered!

Chinstrap penguin 

Cruise buddies L to R - Eileen (MO); Jenny, Terri (Gibraltar) and Mary Beth (MO)