There was alot of stuff planned for today with landings both in the morning and in the afternoon and then our overnight camping trip tonight.

With that much going on, an early morning was how we started the day as we got a 6am wakeup call.

Morning time

I started the day with an early breakfast at 7am where I was surrounded by people on my table airdropping each other their photos on their iPhones.

Honestly, this was the first time where I was really like, damn, maybe I should get an iPhone cause my poor little Android can’t get those photos.

And some of those photos are amazing.

Erin transfers her photos from her camera’s SD card to her iPhone and they all look so good with nice zooming and crisp photos.

If there’s one thing I’d do differently for this trip, it would to be bring a nice camera with me instead of relying on the 10x zoom on my phone.

After breakfast I just kind of strolled on deck for a little bit taking in the magnificent scenery of icebergs surrounding us.

It wasn’t even that cold as I was just walking around in a tshirt and pants.

I also finally caved and bought 2G of internet for $40usd and started to upload some of the blogs from the past couple of days that I had already written.

I’ve told myself I’m just going to be in and out on the internet.   Just posting blogs and going quickly on social media to promote them and that’s it.

No doom scrolling or even looking at my notifications or emails.

I’m in Antarctica after all and there’s way too much to see and do while I’m here.

Zodiac ride

The morning expedition today was to Orne Harbour where there was a steep climb up a rockface.

If we don’t want to do a landing we can opt to just do a zodiac ride around the area and, well, I wasn’t really in the mood to do more climbing so it was the zodiac for me today.

There were a dozen of us aboard and John, one of the naturalists on board, shared his vast knowledge of the area and the animals in it with us.

As we boarded the zodiac his first words to us were “I’m not a bus, I’m an uber – you tell me where to go”.

We drove around some blue icebergs and up close to the shore where there were seals and gentoo penguins.

The ride was slow and calm and there was honestly no need to wear any gloves or beenie.

I actually was so happy with my decision because it just gave me a different vantage point to my visit here in Antarctica.

Chatting with Angel

After the zodiac ride I had free time to myself to I just hung out in my cabin.

A short time later the room attendant who is looking after our room while we’re here came in to clean and change the beddings.

His name is Angel and, like 80% of the crew on the Expedition, is from the Philippines.

He’s always been super friendly and does everything with a smile.

I wanted to get to know him so I asked about his life behind this job he does.

Turns out he has a wife and 2 kids back home and he barely sees them.

For the last 15 years he’s been working on cruise ships for 10 months out of the year either here in Antarctica or up around the Nordic countries.

His kids are 6 and 14 and the younger one has autism which, as you can imagine, is rather expensive.

He actually sends 100% of his paycheck back home every month.

It was quite the juxtaposition of me, a guy who just spent 10 grand on a trip of a lifetime and him cleaning my room in order to earn money to send back home.

It honestly really humbles you and puts things in perspective and I just wish the world wasn’t as unfair as it is just based on where you’re born.

Needless to say, I’ll be taking care of Angel quite well at the end of the trip.

Antarctica Post Office

After the long, thought provoking conversation and a nice lunch, it was finally time for one of the highlights of this trip.

Visiting the Antarctica Post Office!

It’s located at Pork Lockroy on Goudier Island and apparently visiting the post office is always a big question mark.

Our expedition leader said they are only able to make the visit about 25% of the time because of the weather.

To be honest, we’ve been very fortunate and blessed with the weather down here on our trip having been able to visit less visited places quite often so far.

So, yeah, we found out the post office was a go last night and we were all pretty damn happy.

Before we boarded the zodiacs to get over there we were told a few times to make sure to bring our credit card and, if we wanted, our passport.

The credit card because that’s the only payment they take and, along with postcards and stamps, they also sell a small selection of different souvenirs.

The passport because, if you’re so inclined, you can pay £15 ($27) to get your passport stamped with an unofficial Antarctica stamp.

The post office is run by the United Kingdom Postal Service and is a little building with a museum and gift shop inside it.

Because it’s so small, only 30 people at a time can be inside so our drop off points were split amongst the passengers.

Some would start at the post office and then go over to Jougla Point directly across the water to see penguins while others would do that in the reverse order.

My group started at the post office so we got on land and were greeted by some penguins as we waited to enter the small building.

After brushing your boots and soaking them in a cleaning liquid, you enter the building and one of the first things you see is the bright red post box with the ERII royal emblem on it mounted on the wall.

To the left is the shop area with a couple of walls of various souvenirs including sweatshirts, bookmarks, buttons, pins, pens, and, well, you know, the usual souvenir kind of stuff.

Beyond that, however, were a stack of postcards and accompanying stamps to post them with.

The postcards cost £2.50 each and the stamps were £4.

I wish I had thought to get more addresses to send more postcards off but, in the end, I sent two.

One to me, cause, yay, souvenir!

And the other to the restaurant I work at.

Now, how long will they take to arrive?

Well, from the Antarctic post office, they travel to the Falkland Islands and the over to the UK before finally getting into the UK Postal system and sent to their final destination.

I’m told it will be a few months so we shall see.

After buying a couple of souvenirs and posting my postcards, I headed across the hall to where they had a makeshift museum of what different rooms in the building use to have.

Outside I came across one of the ladies who works here.

She looked to be in her 60s and I asked her about what it was like to work in such a remote place in the world.

There are 7 people currently working here on 5 month long contracts.   They all live dormitory style in a neighbouring house also on this tiny island.

No running water.   No fresh food.

Luckily they have a good relationship with the various expedition and cruise ships that come by so they’re able to get fresh food delivered to them from time to time and also able to get a nice shower on the ships.

And on a full circle kind of moment, she said that her father had actually worked here as well way back in 1948.

The things you learn if you just stop to ask people simple questions about their life is one of the more fascinating aspects of this trip and I hope I really do bring this forward into my normal life back home.

After we were done at the post office we lined up for another zodiac ride for a short drive to the other landing spot on Jougla Point.

As we were boarding our expedition leader John asked if we were ready to see some penguins.

Um, what?   I was literally staring at dozens of penguins right here at the post office.

Sure enough, we were brought over to an island with a huge colony of penguins.

I can’t stop taking photos and videos of penguins – I just can’t.

They’re just so damn cute especially when they waddle along.

After 45 minutes of walking around with a ridiculously big smile on my face I was headed back to the ship.

Daily recap meeting

By 5:30 I was back on the ship and an hour later we were all in the lounge to attend our daily briefing and recap meeting.

Most of the meeting was about our fast approaching overnight camping excursion.

First of all, as if it was ever in doubt, it was a 100% go for tonight.

We were given some instructions on what we had to do and bring and told what would happen tonight and the following morning.

And then we were sent to dinner obviously to fatten us up so the cold wouldn’t affect us as much I’m guessing.

By 7:30 we were done and back in our cabins waiting for the call over the PA system.

An hour later the call finally came, it was time to go camping!

You can read all about it here.

Edit Note: I am currently still sailing in the Antarctica with limited expensive internet.   I’ll be uploading all my photos and videos into a gallery at the end of this post when I arrive back on land.