We’ve completed our first trip south to the peninsula and are now on the way back to Ushuaia to pick up more passengers to do a quick turn around and come down south again. The ship has changed from a being a hot bed of frenetic activity, with the crew staff and passengers moving about getting lots of jobs completed, getting ready to to go ashore and or getting cleaned up after being ashore to resting and and watching the horizon roll back and forth. Whilst the weather is not too bad it is forecast to deteriorate in the next 24 hours – a few of the more masochistic passengers are looking forward to the 5-7 m swell and 30 – 40 Kts of wind that are predicted to arrive.
We’ve had some amazing day trips over the last 4 days though1 We were able to go ashore to climb in areas that may not have been visited before. The snow has been difficult with really warm conditions generally during the day and the night – causing lots of deep snow plugging and sore legs!
We had 1 day of exceptionally strong winds which didn’t stop the more hardy (foolish?) of the climbing team summiting a small peak in 80km to 100 km winds – crawling across the very top of the peak was even hard but we were able to get down out of the wind soon enough.
Its amazing to be climbing looking down at the sea – combined with icebergs, seals and penguins. Since each trip ashore is normally on 4 hours long we are moving quite quick but on the odd occasion this trip when we have had good snow conditions we’ve been able to take the little spare time we have between sorting gear and waiting for the zodiac to simply sit quietly and listen to the sounds of the Antarctic …
Here are a few images for you to enjoy.
I’ll upload some high res images when back in Ushuaia in the next few days.
