Yesterday, after a tour of the National Park, we boarded the Roald Amundsen for our trip to Antarctica. We immediately had mandatory emergency drills, familiarized ourselves with the ship and enjoyed dinner as twilight descended. We explored this very modern ship and settled in for a mild to medium rolling sea as the Drake was active, but nowhere near as rough as it could be!
Today was spent in a few seminars, one on how to behave around animals in their natural habitat, and another that told us how to identify the different penguin species. Otherwise, I spent most of my time photographing the six sea bird species that were following the ship on & off. We got our first two Albatrosses as well as several petrels. The captain’s welcome event afforded us the chance to meet a couple from Manchester, UK. Tomorrow we have a birthday to celebrate with a landing around 4PM on the South Shetland Islands, which is the first landing on Antarctica! It will be cold. With good instruction, we should be prepared physically with the right warm gear and how to get in and out of the boat, but nothing will compare to the excitement we’ll feel to actually see Antarctic wildlife in their own world!
