Cape Adare to New Zealand and home...

Day 25 – In a way our last day in Antarctica. Time to bid farewell to the continent and head north. But first.......helicopter flight! Have I mentioned how much I like these? I even forgot to take my friendly Valium this time, though I was well dosed up on codeine and pseudoephedrine due to the appearance of Evil Antarctic Virus Number 2.

A beautiful morning for a pre-breakfast flight.

Taking off from the ship deck on Quebec (the scary little helicopter) with pilot Marcelo.

Flying up a glacier.

Flying down a glacier as it heads out to sea.

A lot of the hills/mountains in this area are snow-free because they're too steep and it's too windy for the snow to cling on.

This area of Robertson Bay is particularly beautiful, lots of snow, lots of mountains, lots of glaciers, lots and lots of penguins swimming in the bay, really really stunning.

Buzzing the hillside.

And so then we're off, heading back north, bye-bye Antarctica it was nice to meet you.

Leaving only ripples behind as we sail away.

P.S. The ship has started to run out of provisions. Today we lost lettuce and margaritas. The margarita drought at pre-dinner drinks definitely caused more of a stir than the lettuce famine at lunch.

Day 26 At sea again in the Southern Ocean and back to the routine of eating, reading, attending lectures and repeat.

We spent some of the day vacuuming our outdoor clothes again to make sure we're not bringing any little unwanted travellers to our next stop (Campbell Island, New Zealand). The provisioning crisis continues and I got my "this is the last Cosmopolitan" warning from the bartender – and not because I was drunk.

And just when I was feeling all sad that we'd left Antarctica behind it says goodbye in the nicest way. Loads of huge and very beautiful icebergs.

This drifted by the window just as we were settling down to cocktails sending everyone scurrying on deck, some with cocktails still in hand.

Then this one caused the captain to announce he was going to take a detour around it. I went up to the bridge for a look (was wearing thongs and didn't want to risk my toes to frostbite outdoors) and found the captain with his own camera trying to get the best shot.

These are big tabular bergs that have broken off from the large ice shelves and then they circulate around and around the continent melting and weathering and becoming more and more beautiful as they go. Their cliffs weather just like land cliffs – wave cut platforms, caves, arches, pillars.

As they age they end up in all sorts of shapes.

The horizon was littered with them – thank you Antarctica for a beautiful send-off.

And later that night a curious thing happened – the sun set, the moon rose and it got dark for the first time in weeks. Spooky.

Day 27 At sea in the Southern Ocean. Still. Nothing out of the ordinary happened at all. A little bird-watching in the morning. Saw our first Campbell Island Albatross. Lots of fog later in the day so our world reduced to the ship and a few metres beyond. And when I got to the bar the bartender decided she could spare me some precious lime for my Cosmopolitan after all, yay!

Day 28 At sea in the Southern Ocean. A Gale! Karl's trying to get the perfect bow-plunging-into-a-wave shot, everyone's walking around like drunkards and clinging to the railings for support, attendance at lectures has dropped off dramatically and the captain has closed the decks so we're all trapped indoors. This gives us time for photo editing (which you should be pleased about because it reduces the endurance required when viewing our holiday snaps when we get back) and Karl is taking this very seriously indeed. Expect his next Flickr series to be the best ever. No pressure Karl.

I guess this is why we're not allowed on deck.

Day 29 At sea in the Southern Ocean. Storm! It's getting serious now. We're going so slowly (bashing into big waves slows you down) that we're not going to have time to stop at Campbell Island and might even be behind schedule getting to New Zealand. Our speed has been about 5 to 6 knots, which is the very same blistering speed some of you will have experienced with us on Grainne Mhaol. So not getting anywhere quickly. Heath and Safety strategies have increased – the deck is still closed, the wine/cocktails are served in low stubby glasses, the waitstaff aren't serving us tea or coffee after meals (we can burn ourselves at the coffee machine if we're that desperate) and (horror of horrors) the tablecloths have disappeared from the dining room to reveal lovely sticky rubber matting to keep our plates and cutlery from becoming deadly projectiles. After much experimentation with wine bottle security at the dinner table the consensus opinion is that it's safest in the bread basket. At least the captain hasn't had to play his final card yet, which is apparently confining us all to our bunks and sending the dining staff around delivering sandwiches. We did try (unsuccessfully) to confirm with the barstaff that they would also be providing room service in such circumstances.

Yup, still not safe on deck.

The barometer starts to recover from its plunge. Plunging barometers are not a good thing by the way.

Day 30 At sea in the Southern Ocean (surprise surprise). The wild weather is passing and the outside decks have re-opened! Went for a very refreshing breath of fresh air to blow out the cobwebs this morning and straight away saw a couple of albatross. The air and sea temperature are now a positively balmy 8 degrees having both hovered around zero for most of this trip. Karl is back to taking photos again having spent the last couple of days (while trying to edit what he's taken so far) swearing that he would never again touch a camera. We sailed past Campbell Island, but didn't have time to stop, with the New Zealand navy tailing us to make sure we were doing what we said we were doing. It's a spectacular looking island from the sea, all high cliffs and moody clouds. Lots and lots of birds following the boat while we were near the Island and we were asked to keep our window blinds closed at night so the light wouldn't attract birds to the ship where they have a tendance to run into something, knock themselves out and need to be collected by crew in the morning.

Photographer Karl braces himself against the wind to snap that perfect shot of Campbell Island:

Day 31 At sea in the Southern Ocean (but not for much longer). Our last full day, we should arrive tomorrow around midday. A funny thing happened today, water started appearing out of thin air, it seemed to be falling from they sky, like snow but already melted. It was packing and sorting yourself out day, returning your rubber boots day, returning your lifejacket day, last everything day. We had a celebratory Captain's Cocktail Hour before dinner and another one of those BBQ dinners that involve free wine so by the time we all made it back to the bar after dinner we were in a very good mood indeed. There was a great party atmosphere for the last night and Karl's man flu symptoms even improved for a while.

Day 32 Arriving at Bluff. Land was in sight after breakfast, between rain showers. It was actually really cool arriving in a different country after a long sea voyage, like in ye olde days. On the customs arrival card the answer to the question "Countries visited in the last 30 days" was, simply, "Antarctica" (or, technically, "none"). It was strange approaching land with its smell of trees and its houses and its cars moving very fast. We even had our own little tug meet us and help us into our berth. And it was really really strange to have the ship surrounded by buildings instead of just sea.

Our little tugboat:

Just doesn't seem right to have the ship imprisoned like this:

Bluff is a great little spot, a real one horse town. So far I've met the friendly lady at the ferry terminal, the friendly lady at the post-office, the friendly lady at the pharmacy (Karl's man flu is back with a vengeance) and two friendly ladies at the supermarket, one of whom passed on her husband's stout (as in the beer) recommendations. Bluff has a reasonably large commercial port and I suspect the crews passing through are what drives the market for the very wide variety of "Strong" and "Extra Strong" beer in very large bottles (and 1 litre cans!) in the supermarket. The weather is distinctly Irish – moderately cold, frequently sunny but with regular vicious rain squalls with horizontal rain. And just because it's a small town doesn't mean there aren't some serious security issues:

And as it's Valentine's Day we had dinner at Bluff's only restaurant – there were two but one burnt down and is not yet rebuilt. This was our first ever dinner out on Valentines Day having always fastidiously eaten at home on that night, romance not being our thing. It wasn't bad. Nicely low-key restaurant, one rose on each table and a couple of heart-shaped chocolates, lovely sea views, good steak, surprisingly few romantic couples. And then (just to prove how small Bluff is) we bumped into one of our expedition guides (who had just got married and was hunting down a last minute honeymoon venue) and one of our helicopter pilots.

View of the coast with the old pilot station

The end of the road – well, the end of Highway 1. Where we chose for our romantic dinner:

The next day we woke to......an alarm! Where were the soothing tones of our expedition leader gently waking us from sleep? And who was going to tell us what we were going to be doing for the day? Well, we were going to Stewart Island, the southernmost bit of New Zealand. But of course on the way to the ferry we bumped into another of our expedition guides who was able to advise us on what to do on Stewart Island because he knows everything about everything. This is the guy who had been on Deception Island during the volcano eruption (have you been paying attention to previous entries?), he also spent a season covering hundreds of miles with sled dogs down the Antarctic Peninsula, he spent a season "geologising" (one of my favourite new concepts) and found a Martian rock, he's led tours to the South Pole and guided on Mt. Cook and he has a glacier in Antarctica named after him – one of the other expedition crew was googling and came across it.

Stewart Island is a lovely spot and completely perfect for a slow re-integration to civilisation when you've been in the company of only penguins and seals for a time. Good fish 'n' chips and beer at the bar with views over the bay. A couple of quiet days with some people and shops but nothing too hectic. Then our graduated exposure continued with a drive from Invercargill to Dunedin. A wee pub crawl around the centre of Dunedin to desensitise us to larger groups of people and the experience of having a choice of venues for pre- and/or post-dinner drinks. And then back to Brissie to thaw out.