Beautiful hikes and Christmas dinner
The location of the afternoon landing was changed a couple of times. We had our plan A, plan B and C as we know the whole itinerary needs to be flexible enough due to unexpected closures, sea ice or weather changes. So it happened that the weather has picked up quite a bit at 14:00h and it was not safe to land on the exposed shores of George Point. Cuverville Island is closed for landings due to avian influenza. We checked Danco Island in ship scheduler. Luckily nobody had booked the site for afternoon landing, also the calmer waters of Errera Channel made it a perfect spot for landing.
The location of the afternoon landing was changed a couple of times. We had our plan A, plan B and C as we know the whole itinerary needs to be flexible enough due to unexpected closures, sea ice or weather changes. So it happened that the weather has picked up quite a bit at 14:00h and it was not safe to land on the exposed shores of George Point.
Cuverville Island is closed for landings due to avian influenza. We checked Danco Island in ship scheduler. Luckily nobody had booked the site for afternoon landing, also the calmer waters of Errera Channel made it a perfect spot for landing.
Water was a bit shallow on landing site so good waterproof boots were essential. We all made it to shore with one group exploring the beach with Joakim, while the other group hiked to the top of the island with Matthew and Ricky. The nearby snow covered slope was covered with number of penguin highways. On the beach itself lies a small piece of foundation block of the former British base founded in 1956 and dismantled in 1959.
It looks like few visitor groups had already scaled the hill top before us, which made a nice zig-zag pathway to the ice covered summit. On the way up we observed couple of Gentoo penguin rookeries. Few of us wondered why they would build their nests so high up and far from the sea.
The higher we got the more of the panorama opened up for us to enjoy. The elusive continental Antarctica was almost reachable, right there, but yet so far. Now we could observe, why the continental landings are so few and difficult. The shore is not accessible with hight glacial faces, cliffs and often very strong swell. We didn't spend too much time on the top and soon started to head down just after a group photo was taken. It was a nice afternoon and a nice hike but I am sure everybody was very hungry and keen to get back to the ship for some nice dinner.
We had no idea what Adam and Sasha had been cooking for us, pun intended. The festive mood was full swing. I think everybody enjoyed the food and dessert tonight. After the special dinner there was all evening for us to have fun, chat, reflect, play music and sing. Merry Christmas.
