17th – It’s not supposed to be like this

We had been informed that we would be woken up around 0515 but when I woke up a bit earlier I heard people already walking around outside and taking down tents. I crawled out of the sleeping bag after a warm but short night’s sleep into the cold tent and quickly got dressed. Quickly being relative as movement was severely limited due to the size of the tent.

The camp was taken down and at 0600 we were back and enjoying showers on the ship. Breakfast at 0630 where we discussed the past night. Apparently, a lot of people were freezing throughout the night – some couldn’t sleep because of it – and funnily enough that exact group was the same group of people who had been using their sleeping bags fully dressed. I am surprised how many people are not aware of how to correctly use a sleeping bag.

The plan of the day was to visit the only post office in Antarctica, Port Lockroy. Coming down through the Errera Channel there was barely a ripple in the water which mirrored the surrounding mountains and land giving us a beautiful view. Port Lockroy is located in the Neumayer Channel but when wanting to enter it from the North there was far too much ice for it to be feasible so the captain brought the ship around and took us down through the Gerlache Strait towards the south entrance of Neumayer Channel. There was a fair bit of ice, the water was almost completely covered by individual pieces but slowly but steady the ship was brought forward until we around 1530 finally arrived at our destination and cast anchor.

Half an hour after arrival people were either being taken to Port Lockroy or Jougla Point – a point not far from the base but necessary due to the limited space in the buildings. A couple of hours later people had both had the chance to see penguins and shags and walked on fast ice at Jougla Point and been at the base and post office and shopped postcards and/or souvenirs if you were into stuff like that.

Jougla Point.

Antarctic (blue-eyed) shag.

Port Lockroy.

Around 1900 we were all back on the ship having a slightly later dinner followed by a briefing. We were informed that we had been the southernmost ship today and the first to go through the northern entrance of the Neumayer Channel.

On the way to tomorrow’s destination we experienced a beautiful sunset while slowly sailing through the channel with water that was like a mirror. The conditions were pretty much everything Antarctica isn’t known for and the guides are very excited as they had not seen anything like this before.