Friday Jan 20, 2023
Hi gang! Happy Friday! We made it safely thru the Drake Passage! YAY! They said today would be a sea day but I didn’t realize that around 3 PM we’d see the first part of Antarctica! It was called Deception Island. It was named that since the explorers thought it was just a regular island but after further study the whole thing is a volcano. The last eruption was 1970 but it’s still an active volcano. We were hoping it would erupt when we went past it but it didn’t!
The weather kept going from overcast to sunny with lots of low level clouds so some of the pictures look dark. The weather definitely got chillier! We were out on our balcony to view the island but it was still windy and cold. I think they said the temperature was 31. I believe we won’t see more of Antarctica until tomorrow morning but then again I don’t think the sun sets until after midnight (you know “The Land of the Midnight Sun!) so who knows what else we’ll see tonight!
Prior to viewing the island we went to the two educational talks in the morning. The first was on penguins and the second was on marine mammals. For the penguins, there are only four that live on Antarctica and they are the Emperor, the Adelie, the Chinstrap and the Gentoo. I included a picture of all 18 types of penguins in the world for reference. They are all so cute!
The talk on marine mammals was all about the various whales and sea lions that live around Antarctica. We actually saw a few whales blowing mist out of their blowholes as we passed the island but none came up out of the water. I captured a picture of an albatross flying by while a whale blew mist out but it’s a little fuzzy (I drew a circle around it so you could see it!). I’m hoping we’ll see more whales in the next few days. They also said there were penguins near the shore but we never saw them.
After the talks we had lunch and played trivia. We did not do well at trivia again! Must be all the food we’re eating causing the brain to focus more on digestion than trivia! After trivia is when we went to our balcony to view the island. All that viewing made us tired so we took a quick cat nap and got cleaned up and went to dinner.
We had another great dinner and afterwards went to see the show which was a female singer. She was on The Voice from the UK and was really good. She sang a lot of Broadway show tunes and a long set of Barbara Streisand songs. After the show we just chilled and called it an early night since lots more Antarctica to see starting at 8 AM tomorrow. Hope everyone has a great weekend!
The Wandering Italian 