Day of Reckoning

The day is off to a miserable start. Correction: it is off to a Classic Antarctic start. Specifically, it was cold, windy, and wet. (Antarctic tour operators have it easy. If the weather’s bright and sunny, they tell us we are lucky; if the weather is bad like today, they tell us we are experiencing Antarctica in its true form.)

In a masochistic way, this was fun. We saw the strangest, most beautiful icebergs in every shade of blue imaginable. There was one that looked like very familiar (see below) and someone exclaimed, “It looks like a ship!” to which someone retorted darkly/ half-jokingly, “Maybe it is a ship.” Everywhere we go, we are dogged by stories of cruises gone wrong (the Titanic, the MS Explorer which sank in Antarctic waters in 2007, the MV Ushuaia which ran aground in Antarctica and got stranded in ice just one month before our trip, etc).

For the rest of the morning our otherwise lovely marine biologist Pat Lewis drives the zodiac like a maniac and we are generously pelted with salt spray. To add on to the festivities, the heavens treat us to some healthy hail, which hits like strings of frozen needles. Ah, Antarctica.

Lesson of the Day: Antarctica cannot be claimed nor captured, on camera or otherwise. But for those who are able and willing to brave the Drake to see it, it is there in all its glory for you to experience in person.

Giant mushroom iceberg

Ship iceberg