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.

So, folks, you will have noticed….only pix from a distance away, no pix wandering around on land with penguins, etc. Here’s the deal. Somewhere along the ~47 flights we took to get to Buenos Aires, Barbara caught a nasty cold. Generous soul that she is, she promptly shared it with me. And we’ve been hacking our guts out ever since. We pretty much just hang out in our room, coming and going to sit in the corner somewhere and eat meals. Seems really stubborn, which will probably mean that we’ll not get to set foot on the Antarctic peninsula this trip. Our lungs are already stressed from a week of coughing, and subjecting to the hyper-frigid Antarctic air could only be asking for trouble. So, we’re in stasis mode, nothing can really happen until something happens. So pardon the lack of substance on the blog. When I can post something about an actual new experience, y’all will be the first to know.

 

Pretty magnificent.

 

Gotta love the icebergs!

Well, we made it to the peninsula! And a light dusting of snow coming down - Merry Christmas….almost.

Last night the Drake bounced us around fairly forcefully, which made the evening toilette a little interesting. But this afternoon it settled down quite nicely. When it does that, people refer to it as the Drake Lake, and as you can see, this is a lot more Lakey than Drakey.

A little more than halfway through the Drake, it’s a 2+ day experience. Last night we bounced around pretty well, but this morning it has calmed down a bit.

On our way!

Our wonderful ship sailed out of Ushuaia last night around 11:00p, so we’re now in the Drake Passage for the next 18 hours or so.  Can be pretty rough, but we’re old hands at it.  Swells right now are less than 4 meters (12 feet), so not too bad…so far.  Here’s a site to tell you far more than you probably want to know, about current Drake conditions:

https://windy.app/forecast2/spot/498794/Drake+passage

This a new ship we’ve not sailed before, considerably smaller (capacity ~250), so the first few days will be spent exploring and getting to know where everything is.  Pix to come!

Stay tuned……adventure ahead!