After we got back onto the boat from Cuverville Island, the boat headed further south as we had lunch. We headed to Neko Harbour, a gentoo penguin colony and former Agentinian hut. This map also shows our planned route for tomorrow.
This is our “mainland” landing which mattered to some people compared to this morning. Although I don’t see the big deal of it. I think of Vancouver Island as part of North America so don’t see any reason why one of the peninsula islands wouldn’t be considered Antarctica. Again here, the gentoos were in their awkward stage of juveniles losing all their down and unable to get in the water, and adults moulting and not able to go fishing for their chicks. It is to the extent that the chicks (at 4 months old) are larger than their parents and they try to chase, push and bully them around for food. At one point a chase happened and a chick tripped, slid down a small slope, ran into my leg, and slapped my leg with his wing as he stood up, and continued on the chase.
From the beach we worked our way around the back side of the broken up rookery to for a view out into the bay, and of all the penguins.
It was about 5°C out but the wind was a lot stronger than the morning, and kept increasing while we stayed there. It didn’t seem to affect the penguins though. Some of the moulting adults just looked so embarrassed and frustrated for what they were going through.
It is so easy to anthropomorphize penguins seeing so many human traits and characteristics in them. It is impossible not to smile when watching them. Again, we could have stayed there all day, but it was time to go. As we were queuing up to board the zodiac back home a very inquisitive penguin came to check us out, and he had a very keen interest in tasting Mike’s green gloves.
We cruised through some icebergs on the way back to the boat, but didn’t see any wildlife. There was a lot of brash ice we had to navigate around and “crunch” over. We got back to the boat just in time for our recap of today and our briefing for tomorrow. It was a buffet dinner, which was great as we had spectacular light from the setting sun and it was great to eat quick, then get out on deck to take pictures.
It just lit up everything on the continental side showing such great detail.
As shown on our planned route map we are heading back out to open water as we push further down the Antarctic Peninsula. With any luck we should be crossing the Antarctic Circle some time tomorrow.
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