Scenic Sites

• Whillemina bay

One of our days was spent crusing through the impeccably still waters of Whillemina Bay where these looming glacial mountains were reflected like mirror images in the unmoving waters below. Here we saw the emperor penguin on his Rumspringa, whales and sealions diving in an out of the water, and even a small avalanche in the distance. Just another Monday morning.

• Foyn Harbor

One of our zodiac cruises was through a harbor that was once a whaling ship port. Thankfully, whale hunting is forbidden within the Antarctica boundaries. During our little excursion, we came across the rusted, half sunken remains if an old whaling ship that caught on fire and had to be abandoned. The ship is now a nesting site for many of the different birds native to the area.

Another fun fact we learned is that whaling port towns were often named after either the ship captain's wife or his mistress. Ha!

And my final fun moment was seeing an iceberg that looked like the USS Enterprise (Star Trek) and finding out that the area was actually called Enterprise Island.

• Neptune Bellows and Deception Island

Our final landing was on a section of the South Shetland Islands called Deception Island. The entrance to this island is called Neptune Bellows and is an incredibly narrow passageway, with a history of ships crashing into each other or into the cliffsides due to inadequate visualization. We have much more sophisticated nautical technology now, so that was not a concern for us. Neptune Bellows itself, however is so beautiful as its landscape is completely unique from the rest of the continent we had been admiring. This region is the entryway to Deception Island which is actually an underwater active volcano. The landscape is so distinctive with its black sand beaches and steam fluttering off the edge of the shoreline where the polar waters meet heated volcanic sand. Don't be fooled by the steam, though. 2 steps beyond the steam lead us right back into polar water temperatures. So obviously we jumped into it. Polar plunge completed.

As we departed back through the Neptune Bellows, we were flanked by a giant colony of penguins swimming and diving beside us, almost as if to bid us goodbye as we began our journey back to Ushuaia.