Blues Blog

First day on shore in five days. We did a shore excursion into the National Park. Will post some pictures later. Falling a bit behind but will try to catch up things soon.

Today we picked up Chilean pilots and headed through Drake Passage on the way to Ushuaia, Argentina. Tomorrow will be our first day on land after five days at sea.

We are leaving Antarctica heading towards Drake Passage. Rough seas and fog in the south Atlantic. Nothing much to report today. Will be more to see once we approach the tip of South America.

Woke up this morning to a bit of snow

Visibility has been poor but the views have still been quite spectacular. I will post a few pictures with the hope of posting more later.

Our first stop today was Couverville Island. We saw quite a few whales near the island and periodically throughout the afternoon. We will be heading a bit further south to Paradise Bay, which we will be arriving at later today. Below are some of the pictures I took while there. I will add more as time and bandwidth permit.

Not sure where we are at, other than a bit further south of Elephant Island. I’ll try to get a reading on that tomorrow. It’s been quite foggy, and Sue hasn’t been feeling well, so we haven’t done a lot of sightseeing today. It did snow on our deck a bit this evening. The temperature has been at or just below freezing all day. We’re at the beginning of summer for the region.

As we woke up this morning, the first thing we saw was a rather large iceberg. It was a spectacular sight as we sat and enjoyed our morning coffee. Our first stop on this Antarctic cruise was Elephant Island, famous for the shipwreck and stranding of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s crew in 1916. The current inhabitants consist of various species of penguins.

Here are a few of this pictures I took. Takes a long time to upload them. Imagine, the Internet kind of poor this far south.

Here is Elephant Island on a map

It was a day filled with sea lions (or ‘sea potatoes,’ as our tour guide fondly called them) and penguins. We spent a couple of hours in a Land Rover, navigating a long, muddy road to see the wildlife. It was well worth the journey.

I have more pictures and videos but the Interweb is not working well today. As I get a chance I will add more…

Sunny day out with a bit of wind and swell. We are well into the the South Atlantic heading to the Falkland Islands.

Our day in Puerto Madryn was canceled due to 50 mile plus winds. Our next stop is Port Stanley. Hopefully the weather will improve. The last time we were in the area in 2015 we were unable to stop at the Falkland Islands due to the weather. Back to looking at restaurant menus and contributing to the casino.

Two hours later the wind has stopped and we are docking. I don’t think we will have time to do our shore excursion but maybe we will get some time in town….

A long walk and two bag of peanuts we are home…