Sunday Feb 11, 2024
Hi Gang! We had a little bit of sun and blue sky in the morning and also had some surprise guests come onboard today that I’ll discuss later.
Our morning expedition was a zodiac boat ride around Jougla Point. It’s the point forming the west side of the entrance to Alice Creek in Port Lockroy. It was discovered and named by the French Atlantic Expedition from 1903-1905 under our good friend Jean-Baptiste Charcot. He considered it to be a peninsula but because of its small size the term point is considered more appropriate.
There is an old British fort there (Base A) where several people who work for the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) live there for 5 months (Nov to Mar) and come on to cruise ships to sell items to help fund their UK Trust. The crazy part is they have no running water and limited food supplies so they come on to the cruise ships to take showers and get food. They were our surprise guests!
In the afternoon we did a landing expedition to Orne Harbor. It’s a cove indenting the west coast of Graham Land two miles southwest of Cape Anna along the Danco Coast. It was discovered by the Belgian Antarctic Expedition under Gerlache in 1898. The name Orne Harbor was probably in use by Norwegian whalers, because it was used by Scottish geologist David Ferguson following his geologic renaissance of this area aboard the whaler Hanka in 1913.
We saw a new breed of Penguins called Chinstrap penguins. They call them that since they have what looks like a black chinstrap across their white chins. It’s sooo cute! And they are more daring and will jump like 5 feet high or so off the rocks into the water. We also saw a fur seal jumping into the water. Not sure if he was going after a penguin or not!
We got back to the room and got showered and ordered room service so we could be ready to watch the Super Bowl at 8:30 PM (We’re still 2 hours ahead of the East Coast). The chef even made a huge batch of wings for the game!
I’m sending this when the game’s first starting so have no idea who wins. Hope your favorite team wins!
The Wandering Italian 