Well, this is the last day of 6 that we’re spending in the Antarctic Peninsula.

Tomorrow we begin our journey back up through the Drake Passage up to Ushuaia again.

So, it was kind of bittersweet to wake up this morning knowing that these would be our last two expeditions today.

A zodiac ride with John

This morning’s expedition was a bit different from the others we’ve done.

Normally we board zodiacs and go on a short transport trip to an island where we spend all our time exploring on land.

This morning it was just us cruising around Charlotte Bay in zodiacs for an hour and half.

So all 131 of us, 10 at a time, boarded 13 different zodiacs starting at 8:30.

The experience on these kinds of excursions is really determined by who is navigating your ride.

For the 10 of us on my zodiac, we lucked out and got one of the senior expedition guides, John.

He’s done over 300 expeditions both in the Artic and here in the Antarctic spanning over 30 years.

From the States he is a wealth of knowledge on so many subjects that pertain to the wildlife and nature surrounding us.

We cast off from the ship onto the calm waters of Charlotte Bay at just after 9am and began our hour and a half journey.

John has always been happy to answer anyone’s questions and, boy, we weren’t going to miss this opportunity to have him to ourselves for this significant period of time.

I wanted to gauge how our trip ranked amongst other expeditions he’s done.

I mean, we’re constantly being reminded of how lucky we have been with the weather and, in turn, some of the best and sometimes rare landing spots.

He said the trip I’m on is probably in the top 5 when it comes to weather and in the top 20 for the different wildlife we’ve been able to see.

On top of that, he said we’ve had the opportunity to visit places that haven’t been visited in years and that it’s very rare to go a whole trip without a single landing being cancelled due to weather.

Oh yeah, and we got that bonus landing on the first day since we were able to traverse the Drake Passage quicker than expected.

So, yeah, we’ve been blessed with the quality of this trip.

I guess I just picked the right ship at the right time.

We cruised around the bay for awhile spotting a couple of Crab Eaters just hanging out on some glaciers.

No, they don’t eat crab despite their name but actually feast on krill.   Their name was given to them by the Norwegians who called them Krabbi which is Norwegian for seafood.

Other than those impromptu spottings, it really was just a long voyage with John and alot of cool videos of the zodiac riding through the small blocks of ice in the water.

Reflection at Palaver Point

After some free time and another gorging at lunch, we were off to our last landing of this trip.

This afternoon we arrived on the west coast of Two Hummock Island at a place called Palaver Point.

It was given that name because the noise from the penguins residing there echoes through the surrounding valley producing a ceaseless noises that resembles the unproductive chatter of a palaver.

As we approached land on our zodiac, the immensity of the situation started to take over.

This would be our last landing on this trip.

This would be the last time Johnathon would great our zodiac as we docked on land and tell us that “today we were in for the greatest views in the known universe”.

I expected a deafening noise because of how Palaver Point was advertised but it was just a normal penguin colony.

Turns out, according to Kevin, that the penguins weren’t making noise because they weren’t fighting over pebbles.

There was enough rockface exposed and the penguins had already gathered their pebbles for their nests.

Now they were just chilling.

Again there was another long zig-zagging path up the 600 foot mountain ahead of me.

Usually I have that inner voice doubting whether I could do it or not but not today.

This was the last climb, this was going to be done no matter what.

I found this landing had less to do about the penguins and more about reflection and the climb was my metaphorical journey.

I was one of the last ones to climb the hill and I took my sweet time.

I took time to stop frequently and catch my breath but also to reflect on what this trip was and has meant to me.

My work schedule was posted today for next weekend and there I was back on it.   I will be back home this time next week.

I didn’t want to summit this mountain because I felt like once I did, that was it, it was all over.

Yeah, there’s still a couple days sailing back through the Drake Passage.

And, yeah, there’s still half a day in Ushuaia and almost two full days back in Buenos Aires.

But, as far as visiting Antarctica, this felt like the end.

It took me almost an hour but I made it – the last one to climb to the top.

Some more reflection and then it was time to make the last climb down.

The last view.

The last walk through the snow.

The last penguin.

The last zodiac ride back to the ship.

An evening on board

After a much deserved shower, it was off to our daily recap and information meeting.

To start the meeting, Johnathon went from talking about how great things have been weather wise to saying “but all good things come to an end”.

And then he showed a slide of the weather forecast for the drake to show us what he was talking about.

We’ve been used to seeing slides with beautiful greens and yellow showing calm weather and this slide was all purple and blues.

Then he started talking about 50 knot winds and 9 foot waves.

By this point we all called BS on him and, sure enough, he showed us the real weather slide for our journey back.

Ah, greens and yellows – the Drake Lake.

The slide he actually showed us was the forecast for next week.   Those poor suckers boarding after us have no idea what’s in store for them.

The meeting continued with talks from Sarah, Pepper, and John.

Sarah gave a nice lecture on Krill, the food source for all animals down here.   These fish are the size of paper clips and 50% of their population gets eaten each year.

Pepper gave her Crevasses 101 course going through the dangers of crevasses which act just like a bent Snickers bar.   They’re super dangerous and she shared her search and rescue exploits that she’s had down here.

And, John, our resident expert on everything animal down here, went over leopard seals.

After our meeting, it was straight off to dinner which was a Chinese buffet tonight.

Now, 5 years ago, I would have been gleeful over this dinner choice cause, man, I love Chinese food.

But, now, with my gluten allergy I know that most of the food in the buffet would be off limits to me.

No sweet and sour pork.   No noodles.   No wontons.   No eggrolls.

Randy, the head waiter, handed me a plate of gluten free fried race and I added the only thing I could to it – the Malaysian peanut chicken satay.

Man, I miss Chinese food so much.

During dinner you could feel the waves significantly pick up as we started our journey back up north.

There was some musical entertainment tonight in the lounge so I went over there to take it all in.

Not only was Pablo, the resident musician, playing but we were also going to be treated to a crew band made up of 5 of the Filipinos working on board including my room attendant Angel and my regular server Francis.

I was so excited to see them play.

I sat down on the couch directly in the middle of the lounge so the now pretty noticeable shaking would be at it’s least.

Pablo played for about a half hour and, while he played, it became more and more apparent that my time here in the lounge was limited.

As with the first couple of days when we were going through the Drake Passage, I was once again getting a queasy feeling in my belly.

So, sadly, mere minutes before the band would take the stage, I headed to the library in the center of the ship.

It had been my solitary place to recoup from the shaking of the ship previously and it would be my new home for most of the evening.

I ended up sleeping on a makeshift bed of two chairs pulled together and finally around 5am I felt like my stomach had settled so I made my way down to my cabin.

It’s a shame I missed the music and the dancing afterwards but it just wasn’t meant to be.

At the end of the day, I have to take care of myself and being physically sick is not on the menu for this boy.

And that was it for my last day on the Antarctic Peninsula.

A day of education, reflection, and fighting a sore stomach.

Now I know I’ve said the adventure has come to an end but, you know, this was only day 17 and there’s still 6 more days for this trip.

Like I said, I’ll be on the Drake the next two days and then in Ushuaia and back in Buenos Aires.

I’ve got some fun things planned, so keep reading…

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.