Saturday January 5, Old Patterns Resurface...

5:15 Wakeup??!! The expedition staff scheduled a long day for us today, to maximize our landings. That meant a very early wakeup call, and a 6am departure from the Shokalskiy. Alas, now that I have a single, there is no one here to wake me up if I fail to hear the wakeup call over the loudspeakers. I was sound asleep when they left the ship, and only woke up when they were announcing that someone had failed to turn their tags*. In a stupor, I ran topside, only to find that they were not going out, but coming back! I missed a landing at the gentoo penguin colony at Cuverville Island. Worse though, is that a pod of whales was also at Cuverville. The expedition staff nimbly changed plans and loaded up the Zodiacs to go whale watching. They had a nice Zodiac cruise, with whales almost touching the boats! Many folks said it was the highlight of the trip. (Mind you, we say that every day, but this did sound exceptional.) On the plus side: I am very well rested, having gotten a solid 9 hours of sleep.

* One of our constant tasks is "turning our tags": we each have a numbered plastic tag, which is hung on a peg board near the gangway. Each time we leave the ship, we turn our tags to black, and when we return, we turn them back to yellow. That way the expedition staff knows if someone is late or missing.

After breakfast, we visited Useful Island, on the Gerlache Straight. Strange name, maybe named for the weather/navigation station on top. It has a 200m tall mountain, which we got to climb. The way we are eating, any bit of exercise is valuable. We saw plenty of gentoo and chinstrap penguins, plus a few lazy Weddell seals.

After lunch, landing and cruise at Paradise Bay. We watched an albino penguin porpoise around and swim under our Zodiac. The all-white penguins have a tough time survival-wise: because they are easy to individually identify, the seals can track them continuously. Normally, individual penguins blend into the crowd, and the seals are easily confused.

We landed at Brown Station, another Argentinian base. We hiked up to the top of the peak, another 200-meter climb, but in thigh-deep snow. Not a bad workout. On the way down, we got to slide down the hill on our butts, bobsled style, which was great fun. I'm dying to snowboard down one of these glaciers, or to surf a wave generated by glacial calving. But lacking even improvised gear, this may have to wait for another trip.

There were some remarkable old, dense, crystal-clear bergs in the bay. We cruised around in the zodiacs for a while, until dinner. About 20 folks managed to sign up to camp on the ice tonight. Wish there was more room on that trip. Like fuel surcharges, no one on the boat likes to be left out of an activity. It takes away a bit from the otherwise amazing vibe on the expedition.