While nothing
eventful happened in the early morning, today was a very exciting day. After
breakfast, we went onshore to take a group picture. We didn’t stay onshore
long, as it was another penguin colony and by now we are ODing on all the
penguins.
In the afternoon, we
had almost too much excitement to handle. We made another continental landing,
where we on the actual continent as opposed to ice shelves, and we walked
amongst even more penguins.
As I was wearing a
penguin hat, I wanted to see if the penguins would come up to me if I sat
down—so I did! Eventually, brave penguins started to walk towards me, as I was
sitting extremely still. Below is a picture I took of one of them—without my
camera’s zoom!
After about an hour
of sitting and photographing the penguins, we took a zodiac tour around the Nikko
Harbor. We covered a lot of ground and came across a Weddell seal sitting on
some ice. The seal was snoozing—we could
even hear it snoring!—but eventually it looked up to see who was around.
On the way back to
the boat our zodiac driver/whale expert, Mike, heard that there was a spotting
of an Antarctic minke whale. Suddenly, we saw the whale’s dorsal fin and waited
around for the whale to surface. Eventually, the whale popped up right by our
zodiac!
I have never been
closer to a whale, even on a whale-watching trip, and being able to look
straight into the eye of a whale was truly one of the best experiences of my
life. I almost wish this was our last day in Antarctica because this would have
been the perfect ending to a great trip, but we will see what tomorrow brings!
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