Last night we got as far as 65 degrees 45.25 south, before the ice became too thick for the ship's ice-strengthened hull to penetrate. We turned north at about 10pm, and half-a-dozen of us spent another few hours on deck photographing icebergs in the evening sunlight.
Another rather snowy early-morning landing today, to visit a gentoo penguin breeding colony, followed by a Zodiac cruise around an iceberg graveyard – a natural harbour where bergs the size of 15-storey office blocks (with their lower 12 floors underwater) float in, get stuck, and melt (over a period of many years.)
Back aboard for lunch, during which a short trundle between bays brought us to Port Lockroy, a former British military monitoring station and now a museum under the control of the British Antarctic Heritage Trust. About the size (and appearance) of a cricket pavilion, the station is maintained as it would have been in the early 60's (complete with Marmite jars.) I duly spent much of the afternoon explaining Marmite to sceptical Americans, my patriotic fervour fuelled by the sight of the Union Flag flying over the station (and the presence in the museum of a selection of items that would have sustained Splendid British Chaps during their 2-year tours of duty down here: Bovril, HP Sauce, and – of course – Spam...)
I had dinner with Dennis, National Geographic's splendidly eccentric diver / sealife expert; we talked of plankton and Jethro Tull, and many life forms in between. Top chap.
At 9pm we had an unexpected bonus – a landing at Neko Harbour, on the mainland of the Antarctic continent. While most of the guests and crew busied themselves with body-sledging down a huge slope above the inlet, a few of us photography bores trudged up the hill (in knee-deep snow) to be rewarded with a view of speech-disabling beauty. Even by the standards of this incredible place, the wide and silent vista of mountains, icebergs, snow, sea and sky, dotted with penguins, petrels and terns, displayed a staggering grandeur beyond anything that words (or lenses) can relate. No, really.
It's now 1am, and we're heading for the Weddell Sea, on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Tomorrow's events will depend on ice and weather conditions, but whatever they are they'll probably start early. The general idea seems to be to cram in as much exciting experience as possible every day, which is marvellous, although a bit of sleep might come in handyzzzzz.......
