Friday January 24. Sailing to the Falkland Islands
Day 3 Wilhelmina Bay and Charlotte Bay
A nice calm day with spotty sunlight. Glassy seas. As always
mountains of cooled lava (that’s the black mountains) and snow and ice. When
the ice builds into sheets then they become glaciers. There’s lots of glaciers
down here. Some even have names. A few
birds. Icebergs. And whales. And more whales. Breaching whales. Feeding whales.
Diving whales. It’s estimated we saw over 100 humpback whales while we were
here.
It started calmly enough. There’s a few humpbacks floating and showing their
dorsal fin and then diving. And then over to starboard, more than a kilometer
away (thus the small images) one starts to breach or jump out of the water. And
he does it again. And again. And then several groups (pods) start getting
closer to the ship and bubble or bubble net feeding. The whales will dive as a
group and exhale a stream of bubbles. They position themselves so that the
bubbles form a cylinder coming up through the water and trapping all the krill
they can inside. And then the whales come swimming up through that same ring of
bubbles and eat as many krill as they can. A large humpback can eat up to 4000
lbs a day. And the krill around the ship are so densely packed that the ship’s
depth sounders cannot determine where the bottom is located. And we’re stopped
dead in the water until all the whales have moved past us.
Then we continue on through the bay. The golden colour in
the lighting/sky is true to what the day was like: bluish-white where we were
but golden behind the ship.
Charlotte Bay was another pretty little bay. We’re becoming
inured to the scenery I think. There’s a nice iceberg with a sea arch – a hole
through the bottom side so a bridge is formed on the top. More whales but
nothing like earlier.
I feel cheated. Holland America Lines advertises a four-day
Antarctic Experience. Well here we are on day four and we get about two hours
and we’re off towards the Falklands. Now to be fair, fog was moving in and we
were in fog most of the remainder of the day, but from the location of Hope Bay
it was obvious we were not going to do a lot today; he sailed all the way to
the top of the peninsula during the
night. 
Hope Bay has a massive snow field (a glacier topped with
more snow than I want to shovel – ever!) And the entrance is choked with ice so
we aren’t going too far in. There is a large Argentine research base here but
the difference is that there are families here, not just researchers. And a
school. And two teachers. The first
child born in Antarctica was born here. Lots of little red houses and other
buildings. And Adele penguins. As many as 100,000 nesting pairs. And I get my
first really decent photos including the iconic penguin on an ice floe. As we
sail away we encounter a large tabular ice berg estimated at 45m above the
water level, another 100m below (because it seems to be grounded on a ridge
100m down) and about 550m long. This is one huge ice cube.
Enjoy the photos.
Best
Bob and Elizabeth
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