Orcas, penguins, and seals, oh my! What an unreal Christmas. When I woke up this morning we were in this sheltered bay, sunny skies, no chop on the sea, no wind at all. Kayaking time! We spent close to two hours going all around the bay, in and out of orphaned glaciers.
Sadly, since we did spend the two hours (really 2.5 after you get everyone setup and in the water) we were left with no time to explore the rest of the land. But that ok because there is another excursion later this afternoon. Not to mention the views and the weather conditions on this outing was steller! Back on the boat – time to move a little more south. While we moved from the first stop to the next we come across a dozen grey dolphins. So much fun.
Next stop – the actual Antarctic peninsula. Second outing scared me actually. You see, there is a clip on
youtube of this bay with some glacier calfing happening and almost sinking everyone in the channel. Thankfully our guide chose to take it in the opposite direction of the active glaciers. When we started out it was slightly overcast with very little wind.
1.5 hours later things have change. Actually, things in Antarctica change nearly every 5 minutes. What we saw kind of scared us. After again going next to and under a few floating glaciers (don't go under glaciers - we were dumb) snow squalls were about to come in to where the boat was. This really bummed me and my kayak companion since the rest of the people were treated to a 300’ snow slide down the hill.
What we went through that you shouldn't
Oh well, we did get to see some glaciers with neon blue in the shades and they were so perfect. Well worth the total exhaustion both me and my new friend felt when we finally got back to the ship.
Dinner was cute tonight. Duck. Yeah, not a fan it turns out. And no, it’s nothing like chicken – its dry it dark and lacking a lot of flavor. But it was the thought that counts. After dinner is served some of the crew sang three Christmas songs for everyone in the dinning room. It’s always fun to hear people from Asian countries trying to pronounce Christian holiday songs – but they did really well. Now, the dessert to this day. As we’re getting ready to have dessert served the captain comes over the PA: “Orcas 11 o’clock”. Not just one or two but 5. They’re jumping, they’re eating something and they look amazing. They come so close that they actually swim directly under the bow of the boat! The pictures are amazing. Seeing orcas that close is pretty rare for this company, let alone the parents and baby orcas. Oh, and the snow flurries, each flake the size of a nickel, isn’t a horrible way to end a day. Merry Christmas to the boat.
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