Glorious Antartica!

Drake's Passage is famous for its rough seas.  It was projected that waves could be up to 50 feet high.
We wore our seabands to help prevent seasickness.  It works for us.  We were fortunate that our waves were only 26 feet high at the maximum.  This photo was taken on our balcony just before a wave crashed and got Steve all wet.  We were on the 7th deck.

The morning of January 26th started out cloudy, foggy and cold with very limited visibility.  We were among the many cruisers up in the sky lounge peering through the people and the glass to catch of glimpse of icebergs, etc.  The weather in Antarctica is very changeable and predictable and we were all hoping for a dramatic change.  

Amazingly we were blessed with just that.  As we Schollart Channel, the fog began to dissipate and eventually the sun broke through.  When we reached Paradise Bay that afternoon, it was bright, sunny and about 32 degrees which was very pleasant.  Just above the ship's rail you can see a whale spout.

We saw hundreds of icebergs but missed the big one which was 11 miles long, 5 miles wide and about 500 feet high due to the earlier fog and clouds.  We had an ice captain on board who knows and tracks all significant icebergs.  It was fascinating.

We shall this small excursion ship just before we turned into Paradise Bay.

We just kept walking back and forth on the ship to see the indescribable beauty that surrounded us on all sides.

The crew members were ecstatic too.  The captain claimed that in his 8 years sailing to Antarctica, he had never had such a clear, beautiful day.  Here I posed with some of the head chefs onboard.  Everyone was grabbing a chance to enjoy the beauty and the experience.

We felt our upgrade to have a balcony on this cruise was worth it so that as we tired or got cold, we retire to our room and still enjoy the scenery.  It was all so breathtakingly beautiful!

Steve had to be careful to keep the sun off from his face so he added the hat with the brim.

These are whales spouting.  We loved seeing the whales and penguins but getting good photos is an entirely different and difficult matter.

We had our first cruising hot tub experience in Ushuaia at the end of the world.  However, we couldn't resist the opportunity to try it again so we could say that we hot tubbed in Antarctica.

So at about 32 degrees Farenheit, we got into the hot tub.  We were grateful for the robes provided by the ship.

Here's the sunset in Antarctica!

We traveled all night and arrived at Elephant Island, located off the northeast tip of the Antarctic Peninsula the next morning.  Again conditions were less than ideal with clouds, fog, and rain.  However, once again, the fog lifted and we were able to view the island which was famous as the location were British explorer, Earnest Shackleton, lost his ship, the Endurance, and his crew managed to survive the winter on this island.  We can't even comprehend how they managed that feat. 

Each one of those white ice valleys between the mountains is a glacier.  We had a panoramic view of 13 glaciers from one viewpoint.  What an experience to see all of this and the summer wildlife too!

The small black dots in the foreground of this photo are dozens of penguins swimming.

This was like a gigantic wave of ice and it was beautiful!

These next photos show the many glaciers in the background and penguins in the foreground.

Below is our attempt at photographing a group of whales.