OK, 5 airports and 37 hours 27 minutes later, we're back home. it wasn't exactly the adventure we expected - there will always be travel to look forward to, and with any luck it'll be back to the really good kind. Thanks for coming along everyone.

 

When you get back from dinner, occasionally the housekeeping staff has left a little gremlin on the bed, wearing your glasses

Around the ship.

Whale skeleton.

In the gear.

The ship has multiple zodiacs - rubber-hulled boats which ferry us back and froth to the landing sites.

 

One of the old early-20th century whaling stations, now long abandoned.

“When I get big, I’ll be able to climb tall mountains like this….for now I’ll just slide down”

 

In the last couple of pix, the Gentoo penguin chicks (smaller, lighter-gray) wander around with their mouths open, hoping Mom or Dad will arrive with some bounty from their sea-foraging. But then they just get tired and…flake out.

A grand total of two landings - one in South Georgia and one in the Falklands.

So, we are still slooooooooooowly making our way back into the World of the Living. This cold just absolutely clobbered both of us and all but wrecked this entire trip. (I will continue to suspect that the Bubonic Plague might have been in there somewhere). In any case, the ship visited 6 sites on the Antarctic peninsula, we weren’t able to disembark at any of them. One of the main reasons I wanted to go back and do this third trip, was that previously we were unable to land at South Georgia Island, due to high sea surge. This time, we both managed to take the zodiac to shore, and wander around for 10 minutes, before the cough and out-of-breath thing reasserted itself. We’ve been back onboard only, ever since. At least, in that brief stretch on South Georgia, I *did* manage to get one decent photo, which shows why I wanted to go back there. Just seems like a high price to pay for 15 minutes out of a three-week trip.