Day 32 - 11/07/23 - Antarctica Experience - Day 1

 Today began our first full day in Antarctica.  The beauty of the day was that there was no official programming throughout the day until 4pm when the Expedition Team proctored a Q&A session fielding questions from passengers.  We were awakened by the Captain's 8am announcement and we reached approximately 65 degrees and 22 minutes south in the Lamiere Channel before having to turn around just before 4pm due to ice conditions.  It had snowed overnight and it was below freezing with snow flurries throughout the day although I simply dressed in my shorts and long sleeved University of Washington shirt and sandals.  However, most other passengers were extremely bundled up.  In the afternoon the Crow's Nest forward facing windows were blocked by snow and the aft LIDO pool deck was snow covered.  This is our first cruise with snow accumulations.


The early part of the day until around noon was relatively clear and we saw lots rustic & dramatic scenery of icebergs and other floating ice objects like growlers and brash ice (small flat floating pieces that tend to float together in groups.  There was no sea ice (frozen salt water ice; all of the ice was glacial ice0.   We had several penguin sightings (Gentoo) along with a few seals and at one "penguin" sighting it turned out to be a large flock of cormorants on the snow field.  After lunch I took a couple hour nap as the viewing was not all that good.  I was awakened by the thrusters employed during the turnaround.

Antarctic continent coastline (very rugged)




Dressed for bad weather
Cormorants

Gentu Penguins
Seals
Gentu Penguin Colony
Our Route on Day 1

The evening entertainment was Christine Fekete and she wasn't very good.  Her delivery was slow and most of her material was stories about her family.  There was very little audience response to her material.  She was probably the second worst comedian that we've seen on a ship.  The other was on a Royal Caribbean ship on an Alaska cruise in 2022.  However, the movie, "Where'd You Go, Bernadette?"was excellent.  It was set in Seattle and concerned a family's trip to Antarctica.  The Seattle scenes were quite recognizable even though it appeared to be filmed in Pennsylvania.  The Antarctica scenes were set in the area we were in today and the little details seemed to be quite accurate.


In his 4:20pm announcement, the Captain indicated we'd do a slow cruise tonight in the protection of the island and tomorrow's cruising will start around 7am and last until around noon with more snow showers expected and low visibility in the afternoon.  

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