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.