Since we had so much free time yesterday, our historian, Bob Burton, gave a lecture on Amundsen's history and especially his expedition to the South Pole, which reached it no more than about two weeks before Scott did. Part of the lecture included some very recently released original cinemascope footage that Amundsen shot during the expedition and put into a 'movie' format to use in his own lectures about his voyage. Much like a very primitive version of a blog, you might say. The anniversary is a huge deal – the 'Fram', the ship that Amundsen used to get to the Antarctic, is being restored for exhibition in Norway, and apparently the prime minister of Norway is at the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole today to commemorate the occasion.
Since we weren't invited to the festivities, we made do with a picture-perfect day. At Enterprise Island, we had a Zodiac tour of the area. This had been a fairly busy whaling area back in the day, and the remains of a whaling ship and some small water boats, that they used to bring fresh water to the processing ships, are still there, well-preserved since the environment is so cold and dry that it takes a very long time for wood or steel to break down. Here are a couple of shots from the tour.
Along the way, we also saw our share of wildlife, some being a tad far from home…We spotted some penguins on a small iceberg and, since that's the photo every Antarctic tourist wants to go home with, we went out to investigate. And to our surprise, we found a couple of Adelie Penguins onboard, pretty far out of their normal area.
The naturalists knew of a few Chinstrap Penguins on a rocky islet so of course we had to check them out, since we hadn't had any chance to see them yesterday.
After that it was back to the ship for lunch and our move out to the next landing spot: Cuverville Island. Since we were the second group out in the morning, we were the first out in the afternoon. This time it was a landing at a Gentoo Penguin rookery. For those hardy souls who wanted to, they could climb up to about 800 feet behind the landing area for an overlook. We decided not to do that, but instead to take advantage of a mini Zodiac tour on the way back to the ship. There was quite a bit of heavy packing snow on the beach, along with a lot of noisy and smelly penguins, but it was a great landing nonetheless.
So, as we write, we're waiting for the next group to get back from their excursions as we head further south toward the Lemaire Channel. We'll get the details at our briefing this evening.
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