Antarctica - Dec 9th

Antarctica – Saturday, December 9th

Today we made a stop at Mikkelsen Harbor and had to opportunity to go ashore.  It was a short zodiac ride to a small island that at one time had been a whaling stop.  Today the Argentine government has a ‘relief shack’ located on the island, however, it is no longer used.


Once ashore we were able to wander around and see some more penguin colonies.  We saw a new variety of penguin today.  The Adelie penguin we saw was kind enough to let us take her picture.  We named her Adelle.  In addition to the Adelie we also saw many Gentoo penguins.


We managed to hike to the top of the hill where there was a rather large colony of penguins.  When we got there the wind shifted and oh my, the aroma of many pounds of fresh penguin poo made our eyes water.  We decided to go back down the hill, or at least to a place where we were no longer down wind from the colony.


There was one Weddell seal that did not seem to be too concerned with all the humans around.  He was just trying to relax and take a nap I think.


We are scheduled for another zodiac landing tomorrow at a place called Brown Bluff.  I am wondering if it got its name from being covered in penguin poo.  I guess we will find out when we get there.


Tomorrow will be another adventure.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Switzerland to Paris - 2024 - Sept 23 - Sept 26

Image
Gigi and Bearpaw have headed out on a new adventure.  This trip will take us to Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, and France. Monday, Sept 23rd - We left home on this day.  After a quick breakfast with Wilma and Leonard we made our way to the airport (thanks W & L).  Once we checked in and gave up our luggage we passed through Checkpoint Charlie with no issue.  Once the two plus wait time was complete we boarded our Bombardier CRJ900 jet and flew to JFK airport in New York.  The CRJ900 sat only 76 passengers, two pilots, and two flight attendants.  It was a very small plane compared to what we have been used to.  I noticed that the flight attendants were both very slender.  They had to be since the aisles were very narrow. We had only a four hour layover in JFK.  We boarded the plane and in a short time we were airborne.  They fed us dinner and snacks and away we went.  We left JFK around ten PM on Monday.  We arrived in Ge...
Read more

Switzerland to Paris - September 27

Image
We spent today in Zermatt, Switzerland, which is located in the Swiss Alps, at the base of the Matterhorn.  Unfortunately, since the Matterhorn is typically shrouded in clouds we only got to see the bottom half to two thirds of the mountain. Even still, the view was spectacular.  We also got to see a number of glaciers that were in the valleys between the mountain peaks. Once back in town we found the local McDonald’s and had a few desert items known as ‘McPops’.  They were similar to a donut hole, except just a little larger and with apple, raspberry, or Nutella filling.  We opted for two apple and one raspberry. Since we still hadn't had our fill of snacks for lunch we found a bakery and had a couple of pretzels, one salty and one with cheese.  Both were very good. We took a walk around the older part of town and found some original structures from the 1300’s.  They were made of wood but had an interesting building technique.  The foundation was sepa...
Read more

Switzerland to Paris - September 30

Image
Monday, September 30 We rose and got ready to leave Zurich and make our way to Basel.  We were SUPPOSED to have our luggage outside our hotel room at 6:30 this morning.  Then at 8:30 we were supposed to put eyes on our luggage and verify that it made it to the staging area prior to being loaded onto the buses.  What do you know?  Robin heard that as long as you don’t mind schlepping your own luggage you can bring it down and verify your luggage as you are getting on the bus.  So that is what we did.  We were able to sleep until 6:45, get dressed at our leisure, have breakfast, and still make it to the bus on time. Basel, Switzerland is purported to be the ‘artistic’ area of Switzerland.  It is a city of some 200,000 citizens.  Basel is located where the countries of Switzerland, Germany, and France all converge. There were fountains that would provide you with clean drinking water if you needed it and older churches and buildings that have survive...
Read more