Danco Island, Paradise Bay and Port Lockroy

19th February 2012

The ship sailed through the night and we awoke to a very calm ocean, quite the contrast to yesterdays weather. It seems as though the crew are determined to make up for the lost landing of yesterday and today we have 3 trips. 2 are landings,  Danco Island and Port Lockroy and the other is a cruise in the zodiacs around paradise bay. Once again everyone is excited and eager to see and feel more of this beautiful environment.

We soon found ourselves on Danco Island, where we walked to the top of this small island. There was a Gentoo colony at the top and as we walked up we past them either making their way up the steep incline or comically down it. The views atop where inspiring and the first real taste of what Antarctica looks like. Till this point we had only been looking across at sea level or up at never down upon. We were now though and it was exhilarating. I once again found a nice quiet place to park my bum to enjoy it all, I also took the time to watch the wildlife and the reactions of the other guests. Some enjoyed the tranquillity and other striped down to unusual under wear to have strange photo opportunities.

There's whales in this one. Honest!

After awhile Sarah and myself wondered over to the other side where I spotted 2 whales basking below us. to far away to distinguish what they were, but very cool to see. Back on board we sailed to the next destination, Paradise Bay. On route we enjoyed another delightful lunch, we are going to be spoiled and huge at the end of this.
The journey to Paradise was wonderful, scenery was varied and much of our lunch was spent staring out of the windows. The plan for here was a cruise in the zodiacs to see if we could see some wildlife, but also to get close to the scenery. It didn't disappoint! We  saw Leopard seals lying out on the ice, we got a idea of  how huge they are, one of the few creatures in the world who have no apparent predators, it seems that even killer whales leave them be.
The sea was covered with ice burgs and smaller bit of ice, these varied in colour from white to deep blue. We past close to glaciers and you could make out the sound of them moving towards the sea. A little further around a point we came to some exposed rock, where Imperial shags were nesting and a group of Cape petrels bobbed around just ahead of us. We returned to the boat and were welcomed back aboard with hot soup.

The last photo before our battery ran out

The captain took us to our final visit though ever changing landscape. When we arrived the personnel that look after Port Lockroy were picked up and brought aboard to join us for dinner and to give us a brief history of the place. Due to how small it was we were broken up into 2 groups one would visit the station whilst the others would be taken to Jougla Point which was just around the corner. We visited here first. It was a nesting area for the Gentoo's and we enjoyed the antic of the young pestering their parents for food. Here again we found the remains of the whaling era, it was here our battery ran out which was a bugger as the sunset was beautiful!
After we had had our time here we were shuttled over to Port Lockroy. Sadly we had little time here to get a real feel of the historic place and we managed to chat to the guilds a bit and Sarah chatted for quite awhile with one. I purchased a map of the area Probably the furthest south I'll ever spend money. We said our farewell and we were taken back to the ship.

Another fine meal was served and the scenery was lit up by the setting sun.