The crew on the Ushuaia are doing their best filling the voids with lectures and documentaries on Antarctica but the thrill of course comes mainly with the sighting of the wild life.
We jump on our zodiac for our morning tours of the waters.
The feeling is that this morning won’t be special.
The previous group has just come back from their zodiac tour with “nothing to report”.
We keep positive and take few pictures of some tabular icebergs and a couple of crabeaters.
Suddenly we hit the jackpot again.
Our zodiacs are surrounded by a group of Minke whales.
Minke whales are around 10 meters long and never show their tales when they dive.
But unlike the humpback that we saw briefly in day one these Minke give us the impression to be very curious about us and they hung around for at least half hr showing their backs only inches away from the zodiacs and swimming underneath us.
They play a game coming above water suddenly and disappearing again for few minutes. As they are as dark as the water we spot them using our ears more than our eyes. When they come up in fact they breathe making a very distinctive peaceful sound.
No need to say that our companions on the Ushuaia were very envious of our luck.
In the afternoon we made another landing, this time at port Lockroy the most southern land under HM the Queen.
Unlike Buckingham palace this place is only guarded by penguins.
In the best British tradition there is a small museum, a post office and a gift shop....... yes, finally Elena was able to do some shopping, even in Antarctica!
We spoke briefly to the 4 girls at the British station. They live there with no communication or hot water and in fact they were very happy to come briefly on board to the Ushuaia to take advantage of the boat’s facilities.
During the year there are roughly 1000 people living in the various stations in Antarctica. During summer time with tourists like us coming to visit the population rises to 4000 units.
Beside the close encounter with the Minke whales today was a very special day for another reason.
Exactly 100 years ago, on the 14th of December 1911, Amundsen reached the South Pole.
What great opportunity to have a party here on the boat.
The cocktails prepared with Antarctic ice are also special for one reason.
This ice is full of air. As it melts in your drink it makes a popping sound like the rice crispies.
This oxygen has been trapped in this ice for hundreds of year and we are now finally liberating it via our Jack Daniels and coke!
It is midnight and we are almost ready to go to bed, when a German lady suggests us to go out on deck for few minutes.
As you would expect at this latitude and 6 days from the winter solstice, there is still a dim light in the sky. There is total peace around us. We would stay longer but we can hardly resist the cold, so we rush inside in our cabin for another Antarctic night.
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