Day 14 - 20/Jan/24 - Antarctica - Day 4

 On this our last day in Antarctica, I was in a deep sleep when at 8:30am I was awakened with a start to an empty bed.  Angela had already left the room and the TV was showing open waters in front of the ship.  My immediate thought was that I missed Elephant Island as the schedule showed us arriving at 7am.  So I dressed and Angela returned from her walk and calmed me down with an explanation of what was happening.  Whew!  I dressed and headed up to the LIDO for my breakfast of Congi.  We attended Dr. Ed Butler's presentation on Antarctica and Global Change.  He presented lots of technical data but stayed clear of the political issues surrounding climate change..  

We had a revised projected arrival time of 1:30pm at Point Wild on Elephant Island. Through much of the voyage it was quite foggy and we had concerns about whether we would even see the island.  As we approached the island, we had to reduce the speed to 9 knots as we were in a whale zone.  Whales were spotted although I didn't take any pictures.  As we neared even closer to the island, we passed through what must have been a very fertile area as we saw lots of penguins, fin whales, seals, and sea birds.  We even diverted our course to be able to enjoy those sights. And the visibility dramatically improved.

The Captain turned us towards Point Wild and soon we were there, and passed behind the point where we hovered for at least 45 minutes about 1/10 of a mile off shore behind the monument area and in front of the large bay and glacier.  We could easily see the monument to the Chilean Captain Pardo who rescued the majority of the Shackleton crew after they spent a winter hunkered down under two boats and surrounded by a colony of penguins.  His rescue occurred after three other attempts were made by others, and he's a Chilean hero. What a smell that must have been, but it did provide them a source of food.  I took lots of pictures and it was really cool to be closer than we got before on our voyage two months ago.  Eventually we pivoted counter clockwise and sailed out of the area and began our journey north to the Falkland Islands which is intended to be our next stop.  It's worth noting that we skipped the 2pm Antarctica lecture because it was much more interesting to experience the real thing rather than someone else's experience.

We spent much of the rest of the afternoon in the Crow's Nest where I read more in Shackelton's book, "South" and stared at the fog ahead of us.  There was not much visibility.  After our LIDO dinner, we attended James Celien's second performance of illusions.  He was a substitute for the Step One Dance Company who felt the seas would be too rough for them to perform as we would be in the Drake Passage.  James was really, really good; and in my opinion, while there was more motion to the ocean, it was not nearly as bad as on some other ships we've been on when the Step One Dance Company performed.  

We finished our night listening to 2 sets of One Hit Wonders in the Billboard Onboard along with an All Request set before retiring for the night.  

As we reflect on our 4 days in Antarctica this voyage compared to our previous one 2 months ago on the Zaandam, it seems like this one was much more of an expedition and the other was a "drive by".  We went to pretty much the same areas with a few differences, and both were quite enjoyable.  We felt like we hade more comradeship on the Zaandam because of all other shore excursions we engaged with the same people on.  We're certainly looking forward to a possible stop in the Falkland Islands which is two days away after a sea day tomorrow.