We stepped on an Antarctic Island today: Cuverville, situated 64° 41´S / 62° 38`W, in between Rongé Island situated in the Gerlache Strait and the mainland. The island is home of about max. 20.000 Gentoo Penguins, a pity I cannot send a photo of the smell with this ;).
It was a wonderful (first) landing: the passengers all did what is absolutely the best – not move much but sit down and watch and see the penguins coming out of the water passing by you, watch young chicks playing close to you or chasing their parent for food. Brightest sunshine accompanied us and made the 0° Celsius feel like 15° or so, at least it was not cold at all. What a privileged way to spend your afternoon. After an hour we headed back with our Ukrainean (all our crew except for the Chief Cook are from the Ukraine) zodiac drivers to the vessel and heaved the anchor, to head for Paradise Bay.
In the afternoon we thought about stopping in Neko Harbour, but the Rescue hut from Captain Fleiss, built in 1949 had been completely devastated last night with the storm (so much for our wind forth and been shaken like lottery ball on board).
Mainland: the Antarctic Continent
Instead we sailed one bay on and stopped in Paradise Bay, where the Almirante Brown station (Argentina) is manned this season, for the first time since I came there in 2002. There were 9 men working on cleaning up the station to maybe open it again in the next season, after it had to close in 1984 when a doctor who was told do stay a 4th winter over got mad and burnt the station down so they had to take him home to Argentina instead. The place is nice as ever, we all climbed up the steep little hill to get that fantastic overview over paradise and the station. One fun part is sliding down on your butt on the way back down.
In the evening we had 2 of the Argentines over for dinner an fun evening on board and they were telling us a lot about their work, which is always very interesting. People who live and work in Antarctica. There are not many!
