Yesterday afternoon was our last chance to tour in Antarctica, and we did it in zodiacs in a beautiful bay, full of ice, ice bergs, surrounded by glaciers and mountains. The water was flat and calm as we cruised around, finding leopard seals lying about on ice floats. We also found a couple of weddel seals, and even had a fur seal come swimming around us.
This morning was the Iron Penguin Challenge. My old friend, Ben Brown, recruited me for his team, which would consist of us plus Larry and Lari, a father and daughter who are on the trip with us. It was a series of events:
1. Eat a cracker with Vegemite (It's Australian, it's yeast extract, and possible the world's worst tasting substance, but it's really good for you.) and wash it down with bilgewater (really just a mixture of juice that looks brown and disgusting).
2. Go to the bar, and suck on an ice cube until it's totally melted.
3. To the mudroom, put boots on the wrong feet and life jackets on backward, climb to the top deck, make a lap touching all 4 corners of the railing, and back down.
4. Name one species of whale, seal, and penguin that we've seen on the trip.
5. Go to the 5th deck to the plunge pool (filled straight from the ocean with freezing water) and take one lap around to each of the 4 corners.
Then to the sauna to warm up.
Well, we didn't win, but we had lots of fun. Then went up on deck and saw maybe 20 - 30 fin whales off in the distance, blowing and swimming close to the surface. Pretty amazing.
We'll be back in Ushuaia on Monday morning, so I'll be able to post more then. Today is the end of communication from the ship. So, stay tuned until Monday.
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1 comment:
That's me! Hee!
I still hold that I lost us a lot of time with the ice cubes, but it really was a lot of fun. :)
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