Ok, midnight is 10 minutes away, we are limping toward the culmination of New Year's Eve. It's surreally quiet out there. As opposed to down the hall, at the party rooms. We're old and antisocial, I guess - standing on our veranda and seeing this is more fun than horns and hats. But to each his own, Happy New Year, everybody!

Fog and mist roll in, on New Year's Eve. Only adds a little mystery to the majesty.

I find the ship's wake fascinating and vaguely artistic.

We went to the aft lounge for a warm drink after our landing today, and as we sat down, Barbara said "ok, now I want a nice big whale to swim by our window". Yep. Not 15 minutes later we saw a huge humpback, arching his back into the air and showing us that huge fluke before gliding back out of view. Barbara has been appointed Cruise Director.

"Pardon me, comin' through, 'scuse me, beg pardon...."

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Our landing today is at Neko Harbor, which is on the Antarctica continent proper rather than the two islands of the last two days, so purists who want place checkmarks next to their "continents visited" list can now do so. At the ever present penguin colony (Gentoos), there are at least three sets of chick pairs. A little blurry in the third photo, but the middle penguin has two grey-fuzz balls in front of him or her. The large gulls, skuas and other predatory birds swoop by every now and then, so the chicks must never be left unattended.

10:30p. G'night.

Mountain and reflection...at 9:30p.

Even the ship's wake is beautiful.

Just walk down the hall and glance out of any window....

We are essentially in a floating Antarctic hotel room, and this is the ever-changing view out the window.

I said, late this afternoon, "is there anything that could have made this day any better?" Barbara said "Nope. Except maybe, we haven't seen any whales today." Not half an hour later, at the (ahem) on-deck caviar event, the announcements came fast and furious. We had a pod of killer whales on our port, we had humpbacks showing off their flukes on our starboard, then on both sides. I don't have fancy schmantzy high-powered photographic equipment (as I'm sure is painfully obvious) so I didn't snap whale pictures that just would have essentially been a fuzzy black blur on the surface in the distance. But here's the caviar.

We are here. According to Google Maps.

Ice sculptures, Weddell seals, and, as always, thousands of penguins. This is a colony of Gentoo penguins.

This egg was likely stolen by a seabird, dropped from several hundred feet, and the innards became bird food.

We sat here quite a long while, just taking it all in. And watching the industrious Gentoos, building and adding to their pebble-nests with great fastidiousness.

Our zodiac driver Luqui pulled this gorgeous, sculpted piece of crystal-clear ice on board. It was heavy, probably 40 pounds!

We are back onboard now, after our landing. Looking in both directions, from the top deck.

When I opened our curtains just now this morning, this is the view we are greeted with.

At 2:10p, we finally landed!

What a day! Better than we ever dreamed. Our group was the last to shore but the weather held all day - penguins galore, making as much of a racket as they do an, um, aroma.

The zodiacs shuttle back and forth. Passengers are sorted into 5 color groups, each color group gets 90 minutes on shore, so there only about 90-100 people ashore at a time. We are "green" but it's the last of the five groups today (the order is rotated from day to day) so we have another few hours to wait!

Our first look! This will be our landing site today, Half Moon Island in the South Shetland islands of Antarctica. It's not hazy....it's snowing! Yippee!

Nearly midnight.

Even closer....

We are the blue dot, about halfway down the Drake Passage.

 

 

 

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The second tabular iceberg, just outside our veranda door. This one is far larger, the Captain estimates it at about a mile in length.

Gettin' closer!

We are midpoint in the Drake Passage, and at this point we are getting more "Drake Lake" conditions than anything more severe. I was hoping for some dramatic seas and getting bounced around a little, but we actually had that 4-5 days ago, so I suppose this crossing will be ok as is. There is palpable excitement, the Captain just came on the P.A. and announced we are approaching our first tabular iceberg. I scurried out onto the bow area, it's visible off in the distance but probably not yet big enough to see in this photograph, dead ahead, at the horizon, just to the left of the (always unoccupied) hot tub! In 45 minutes everyone will have staked out their positions for our first 'berg!

We were in Ushuaia at about the same time this ship was. It is many, many, many times larger than ours, and we're pretty happy to be where we are.