Thar She Blows!

MAMBO SAWA SAWA! SUPER FANTASTIC!! I asked Doug Cheeseman what was better than Mambo Sawa Sawa – and Ted said just say it louder. We were expecting to be at sea most of the day, reaching light pack ice by about 4pm. So we slept until about 6:30 then looked out the window to see if we could see any ice, and there was a nice sized iceberg floating by. After breakfast, we decided to head to the bridge with our binoculars but didn't bring jackets because we thought we'd only be popping out briefly for photos, if at all. Well, we were wrong.

Beginning about 8:30, there were several groups of humpback whales playing very nearby the ship. And when I say they were near, they were basically touching it at times. They were spouting, bringing their heads above water, showing a pectoral fin, presenting their fluke (tail)...Words pretty much can't describe how fantastic it was. There were several whales playing together, so we repositioned the ship to stay nearer to them, and then they kept swimming closer. After we were with the first group for a while, we decided perhaps we should get our jackets and gloves after all – smart move. The first group of about 4-5 whales eventually moved off, and we thought it had been a great show and we'd now continue south. We were wrong again. Another, larger group of whales then approached, so we repositioned the ship again to stay with them – and got the same behavior; the whales approached the ship, swam on the port side, just off the bow, on the starboard side. We could hear them breathing and it is spectacular!

It was a beautiful, cold day here – the air temperature was about 26 and the water is about 30. The water is incredibly clear – so clear, we could see the whales in their entirety under water. The whites of their pectoral fins are particularly bright. We took probably 1,500 photos just this morning.

In addition to the whales, we had arrived in Antarctic waters, so we'd gotten a lot more ince in the water. Not just little icebergs or very occasional icebergs as we've seen up to this point; the landscape is covered in them! From one end of the horizon to the next, it is dotted with icebergs between the ship and the nearby islands. It's impossible to photograph it to do it justice (but of course we've tried). Some are giant tabular icebergs, the size of city blocks, which are tall (50-100 feet), wide and very flat on top. Some are smaller chunks that have broken off other icebergs, or developed from sea ice. Some are all white, some are dimpled like golf balls, some have blue striations, or darker colors from where they've dragged across glaciers. There were some that had "caves," some with arches large enough to paddle a kayak through...No two are alike!

Icebergs are a favorite hangout for penguins and we hoped to see a juvenile emperor penguin (the adults are found only inland on the continent for breeding and are all in the ocean foraging for food by now) – and we were not disappointed. We did in fact find one juvenile emperor penguin sharing a good-sized iceberg with an adelie penguin. So of course we repositioned the ship again to circle back for another look. It was terrific!

In addition to this special emperor, we also saw multiple icebergs which had groups of adelie penguins on them – so we've now seen the namesake penguin for our blog. In fact, we had the potential to see 7 different penguin species on this entires journey, and now we've seen them all: rockhopper, gentoo, macaroni, king, chinstrap, adelie and emperor. We had some penguin activity on the icebergs, where they sometimes ran or slid across on their stomachs, and in some cases they either jumped or fell into the ocean from the edge of the iceberg. We hope to do zodiac cruising tomorrow to see more of the penguins on the icebergs.

Before we knew it, 4 hours had flown by and it was time for lunch. We popped downstairs and learned that because of the fantastic conditions, including the terrific weather and low winds, we'd discontinue our journey south into the pack ice and do our first landing at Paulet Island. We had a quick landing before dinner – we could either actually go to the island and walk around the Adelie penguin colony where there are 80,000 nesting pairs, or we could zodiac cruise. We chose to land, and had a good time walking near the colony, though it was a fairly contained landing site, but then again, we only had 2 hours to spend there. Then it was back to the ship for dinner and the plan was to zodiac cruise after dinner from about 8:30 to 10:30 or 11pm (sunset here is around 10:45 tonight, not that it gets all that dark). But the winds had picked up by dinner time, so we scratched the zodiac cruising this evening and the new plan was to ship cruise through the beautiful ice formations near Paulet Island. The goal is to land again on Paulet tomorrow morning but for the first time we didn't have a daily schedule presented to us at dinner as it's pretty uncertain what tomorrow will bring weather-wise.

By the way, some of you may have read about an earthquake that occurred in the South Shetland Islands near Elephant Island yesterday morning. It was a 6.7 magnitude quake – and one fellow passenger said he'd read reports that there were actually two quakes. Don't worry – it was a fair distance from where we were / are – we are on the east side of the peninsula and the quake was on the west side. So we didn't feel anything and are not at risk at all.

We've just returned from watching the sunset – for the first time – and it was gorgeous. Overall, this was one of our best days on the trip so far, as echoed by several of the staff as well. Between the huge number of whales, the quantity and variety of icebergs, and the gorgeous sunset, this was a truly spectacular day!