Antarctica Day5 - Deception Island and around

  Deception Island, Antarctica
Monday, February 25, 2008

Today was a truly magic day.  550 pictures later, I am going to bed on a pretty rocky boat.  Pretty unusual for the protected location we are, but this is Antarctica and everything is possible. 

Antarctica_Day5_12

Antarctica_Day5_26

 









It was not even 8h00 this morning and I was already surrounded by hundreds of Gentoos and Chinstrap penguins.  We landed at Hannah Point and spent all morning there.  This place was full of amazing polar and sub-polar animals such as fur seals, whales and their skeleton, birds of all sorts and fantastic scenery.  Funny how we all rushed at the first penguins we saw last night.  Today they were everywhere, even coming so close from us we could have touched them.  As we need to be extra careful about germs transmission, it is not allowed to touch them and we need to make sure our boots are very tidy from one location to the next. 

Antarctica_Day5_53

Antarctica_Day5_58

In the afternoon, we went to Disappointment Island.  This is a very important historical place as many heroic tales happened here.  The island is in fact a pretty large volcano.  Its crater is 7km by 5km wide and it last exploded in 1970.  After enjoying the dramatic scenery, we had a thermal bath!

Antarctica_Day5_182

Antarctica_Day5_194

 

We stripped in the cold Antarctic air and ran from the shore into the ocean.  The floating water was warm while the bottom water was ice cold.  Weird mix as your body is not certain if you are in warm or cold water.  We soon realized that it was the beach near the water that was warm and most of us lay (bit more than 50 passengers out of 100) on the warm stones just like we have seen the seals doing it.  After being warmed up by the heat of the earth for about 2 hours, we head back to the ship happy and very relaxed.