November 23rd - Arrival

The sea continued to cooperate on the evening of the 22nd and I decided to discontinue my sea sick meds as they seemed to be greatly affecting everyone´s energy level and the seas just werent so bad. I had a drink and played some cards with a couple of fellow passengers, but slep early that evening.

We a awoke to find similar conditions the next morning. It is the so called "Drake Lake," from what we are told very rare and fortunate conditions. We were briefed the previous evening that if the good sea conditions persisted we may arrive early enough to squeeze in a bonus landing that afternoon in the South Shetland Islands.

We spent the day similarly to the previous, at lecture. However, since I was no longer drugged up I didnt feel the need to sleep in between. We also watched the GPS screens t

o see our location and our eyes peeled for icebergs that could´ve appeared at anytime; we were certainly getting close, south of one the Antarctic borders 60 degrees south.

The energy onboard continued to build as around 3:30PM we got first sight of land in the hazy distance; it was very exciting. The rocky shores of the South Shetlands 

we approaching quickly and be

fore I knew it we were in their midst. Everyone was buzzing with excitement and felt like we had truly arrived!

When we anchored, we quickly

 prepared to head ashore for the first time. My roomate Charlie and I dawned our n

ew bright yellow expedition jackets and headed for the boats. When we arrived on shore we were met by two colonies of penguins, Chinstraps on the beach and Gentoos on the bluff above. We wanted to hike to the other side of the island, however, so we could not be distracted by the thousands of cute birds. We headed down the beach and up the hill to the saddle of the island. There was a nice rocky beach and a fresh water lake on the other side below. As we headed down 

we saw the huge bones of a whale that had been left by turn of the century whalers as well as a couple of really cute Wedell seals. What we missed amongst the sensory euphoria was two enormous elephant seals that we couldn´t have been more than 2 meters away from.

When we had our fill of the view from the end of the beach, we headed back up to look at the elephant seals and get back top the landing beach to enjoy the penguins. On or walk back a staff member alerted us that a lone king penguin had been spotted on the beach near the landing site. King penguins look nearly identical to the famed emporer penguins and weren´t supposed to see either species on this trip. We made haste back to the beach and spent some time admiring the penguin; where the thousands of smaller penguins were enbearably cute, the king penguing was strikingly majestic. When we had had our fill we headed back to the ship blown away by our first Antarctic experience.

The high of the landing lasted well into the night. Alcohol was consumed and many laughs were had amongst new friends before it was time to sleep. The next day would be even bigger.