South Shetlands to Peter I Island

Day 5 and woke to calm seas, sunshine, icebergs everywhere and views of the Antarctic Peninsula. Absolutely stunning, steep, dark mountains that look alot like the Andes. That's because they are the Andes – the same mountain range extends down the western edge of South America, then curves out into the Drake Passage (underwater) as the Scotia Ridge, occasionally popping up as Islands like South Georgia and South Orkney, and then continues (again getting above sea-level) as the Antarctic Peninsula.

We sailed down a very narrow channel (the Lemaire), dodging ice, spotting seals and generally gazing in awe at the beauty.

Our Captain puts on his serious face as he picks his way carefully through the ice.

Then we went ashore on Pleneau Island. Now this "going ashore" business is actually quite an undertaking. First, dress up warmly.

Then join the others waiting to go ashore.

Then get into a zodiac (that's me in front on the port side)

And then you ride to shore.

Where you find penguins

and icebergs

and lots of snow and space and even a bit of solitude if you put your mind to it

That afternoon we visited Petermann Island, two shore trips in one day really testing our endurance having gotten used to a routine of not moving further than cabin to dining room to bar to cabin. More penguin rookeries here and spent lots of time sitting and staring. They're very entertaining. Males sneaking around trying to steal stones from other nests to bring back to their own women (and when they fail coming back and pretending to put down a new stone!). Females snappily defending their nests. Occasional glimpses of very cute furry little chicks.

And just watching them walk around never seems to get old. They use "penguin highways" where they've made little roads by everyone using the same track and wearing a path into the snow. They're quite good at giving way – even though us tourists have been told penguins have right of way, when we find our paths suddenly intersecting they do stop, very politely, to check before going ahead. Interestingly, seeing as we have to follow tracks set by our guides us tourists seem to end up on our own highway, in single file, shuffling along in a very penguin-like manner.

Ninja-penguins on the penguin highway.

Day 6. Crisis! The coffee in our cabin ran out and turns out there's no more instant coffee anywhere on the ship! So now poor Karl has to trudge up to the bar first thing in the morning to bring us coffee in bed.

Having recovered from that shock we looked outside to see more gorgeousness. Snow, mountains, snow, sea, ice, icebergs, snow and even blue skies and sunshine.

Again picking our way through icebergs, spotting seals on the floes, admiring the view. So this definitely seems to be where all the snow lives. And it is where all the ice lives because the majority of the world's fresh water is contained in the Antarctic ice. Some of the ice looks so much like meringue or icing you to just want to reach out and take a big chunk. Especially when the ship goes crunching through it (see below Karl's arty-farty reflection film)

Today we crossed the Antarctic Circle, the days keep getting longer and I'm fairly sure it's not really getting dark at all anymore. I certainly haven't seen any darkness lately.

Solid proof we crossed the Circle:

We visited another island today - Detaille Island. Now, I had a flu coming on and really did not feel like doing anything more energetic than rolling over in bed, and probably the only thing on earth that could have convinced me to get out of bed was.......well, visiting an Antarctic island. So I pulled myself together, stopped feeling sorry for myself (not really) and got ready. Then had a bit of a rest.

notice how they have our couch, just to make us feel at home.

We visited Detaille Island which has an old British research base from the 1950s. British Heritage are maintaining it for display complete with the books, bedding, horrible old scratchy-looking woolly long-johns and everything else that was here at the time.

There's a brochure on the table in the kitchen "Antarctica Needs You" which I guess is what enticed the poor suckers out here. It really does bring home the meaning of the word "isolation" when you think about what it was like for them as their ship waved them goodbye, "So long fellas, see you next year". It's just mountains and snow and sea and nothing else and no way in apart from during the short summer. There are places in the Southern Ocean (not sure if the same is exactly true right here) where the closest human beings to you would be the staff on the International Space Station.

The hut, lovely view, not many good nightspots nearby.

Taking a moment to imagine that our ship is sailing away and leaving me here.

Detaille Island tries to trap Karl in the snow.

Later that evening we discovered what happens when a ship is steaming along and spots an Emperor Penguin on an ice floe. It announces the discovery to all aboard, stops, turns around and goes back for a look. What does an Emperor Penguin do when a cruise ship stops by for a stare? It just stares back. In fact it won the staring contest, we left first.

Day 7. Flu day. Evil Antarctic Virus Number 1. Good news: we have two sea days so I have time to recover before any more venturing ashore. Bad news: Karl has the flu too, only his is the particularly severe strain – man flu. In the midst of his suffering Karl started to ponder euthanasia. He figured that the latter stages of a terminal illness would probably be even worse than what he was currently enduring and he could see why you might want to make an early exit. I was very tempted to assist him in an early exit right then and there.

We did have to drag ourselves out of our sickbeds to attend the helicopter briefing which perked Karl up considerably. We got to go inside and try out each helicopter. I got into the first one and thought "ok, this is ok, I can do this". Then got into the second, smaller one and thought "yeah, no, definitely not happening". So decided I'd be sticking to the bigger, more solid ones. And would definitely be taking the Valium.

Karl with the scary little helicopter.

So we were headed for Peter I Island. A tiny volcanic dot covered in snow and ice, surrounded by sea ice in the middle of nowhere. Apparently only about 40 boats have ever bothered visiting and more people have been in space than have stood on the island. There was no certainty that we'd be able to get anywhere near the island, depending on the extent of the sea ice. We might try to land with helicopters depending on the conditions. In the meantime, we waited.

We saw a couple of snow petrels – beautiful all-white birds. Karl even got a photo.

They're supposed to be a sign of nearby ice. And then we ran into the ice! This was fantastic, the ship surrounded by ice, ice and more ice. Crunching through it with little tremors running through the ship. And still with big bergs popping up occasionally.

Day 9

We manoeuvred through the ice all night and after some comings and goings we were approaching the island the next morning. We couldn't get close enough to land with the zodiacs and early in the morning the pilots thought the conditions weren't safe to fly. Later in the morning things improved a little and we were going to attempt to fly and land on the island. Through this will-we-won't-we I couldn't decide whether to be excited/scared/relieved. I kindof wanted to fly to see something new but I was terrified of having to fly. Eventually it turned out that the conditions weren't safe to land on the island but we could have a "scenic flight". Which I think was the worst of all possible outcomes for me – I still had to endure a flight but didn't get anything at the end of it apart from the actual flight.

So I took my Valium.

They put the blades on the helicopter (no really, they actually do this). 

And we had lift-off

And I actually had a really good time! The drugs work! It was great to see all that expanse of ice and nothingness from the air and our tiny little ship in the middle of it all.

That's me up front beside Julio, the pilot.

Now, where's that ship gone......

Next up......1500 miles to the Ross Sea. That's alot of free time, I hope the lecture programme's interesting.