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Showing posts from December, 2023

Antarctic, Wednesday 15 November 2023

  A day of ice and hike Our second day our, we got to see more penguins.  The photos on this page are all taken with my Samsung phone.  It has an awesome array of cameras. There is not much to say beyond the  photos themselves. Remember that clicking on any of the photos will bring all of the photos into a slide show.  You can then click on any of them to enlarge. I will as usual apologize for the editing in blogger. It is not at all intuitive. Things happen with out rhyme or reason.  But it is free, so I don't have much to complain about. We had a daily update sheet. I was lousy at getting crisp photos, but the info is there if you want it.   Penguins are innately photogenic. The oil they use to maintain their feathers gives them a pearlesence It is hard to explain the enormity of it all Tobogganing is one of the wonderful forms of  getting around   This photo and the one that follows are of  a giant ice cave. Often there is a huge chunk that calves from the interior. We were requ

Antarctic, Tuesday 14 November 2023

A week and a half after landing, and I am still processing this trip.  I may be processing for the rest of my life. I think any trip to the Antarctic would be life changing. For me as a geographer, traveler, and elder, this trip was on my probably not gonna happen bucket list. Getting there was hard work. Getting over my personal barriers was difficult. There was nothing easy about getting there, a personal triumph. But there was something magical about this trip, this voyage. Even the Expedition leaders noted there was something special about it, a luck.  The weather, the sea conditions, the sightings.  All were way beyond expectations. I will begin as the voyage begins with Drake Passage. This passages has two settings one  involves sea sick meds, learning how to wedge oneself into bed, how not to smash fingers in doors. The other is Drake Lake. There is nothing in between.  We did the crossing in a day and a half rather than the usual two. There were bulletin boards with all sorts o