A small step for mankind

But a giant leap for me, first landing on Antarctica! The place was Brown Bluff and to get to the rocky shore we had to navigate our zodiacs around big icebergs while Adelie penguin were casual looking at us.

Once on the shore there was plenty of ice, snow and penguins! I have now succeeded to see 7 of the 8 different penguin species in Antarctica region, I only have the majestic Emperor penguin left.

There are more people than me who has the Emperor on their highest wish list and I was both surprised and happy when our plan for the day was revealed. Once after our landing at Brown Bluff we set our course south, towards Weddel sea. A tour that took us straight into the pack ice, close to everything from small to huge ice bergs where I estimated the biggest was around 1 km². We didn’t try to drive through that one but besides that our captain is a bad ass and the ice has to get out of our way or we run over it. Its really hard to get a grip of the size of the icebergs but the bigger ones are really huge and its easy to believe that its islands you see, not floating icebergs and the biggest one, B-15 was even bigger than Jamaica when it broke loss from the ice shelf. Now its a bit smaller, just like the size of Luxembourg.

Once we reached the Weddel sea it was really calm, the ice was was hardly no waves at all, instead you could use the sea as a mirror but unfortunately a heavy fog arrived which is not optimal if you are trying to spot animals. A few hours later and it even started to snow I realized that I will only see 7/8.

The feeling of being in the exclusive group of people who actually set their foot on Antarctica hasn’t really landed yet but the feeling of standing in front of the bow, looking out over an frozen sea while the only sound you hear is when the hull reluctantly forces the ice out of its way was overwhelming, I am a very lucky person who see and experience this

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