Feb 11, Day 2 Antarctic Peninsula Cruising

It’s day 2 of our Antarctic Experience after a good night sleep we made our way to view Paradise Bay which is the first of 2 highlights today. We were lucky enough to have a team of 8 from the USA Palmer Station come onboard today and give a very informative presentation on their work in Antarctica. The first was the base administrator who gave an overview of what her job was which is very demanding she also talked about the conditions on the base and showed pictures of the base, she has been coming to Antarctica for 8 years and has worked on both the US bases. Then we had one of the scientific researchers who explained a lot about what they are doing down there and some of the finds they have had, he went on to say that most people don’t realise that Antarctica is actually classified as a desert and that NASA had sent the Mars landing module down there for testing before it was sent to Mars as they felt it had very similar conditions.  Then the other 6 members of the team joined them on stage and spent about 20 minutes answering questions it was a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting talk. After sailing through Paradise Bay we made our way too Neumayer Channel and to Borgan Bay where there were 3 more glaciers next to each other the first was named Hooper the second William and the one in the middle didn’t have a name so I’ve decided to call it the Allan glacier, we also viewed Mt Frances which is the highest peak in this area it is 9000 feet or 2800 metres high. The weather started to deteriorate today and by the afternoon it was more what we expected it would be, we even had snow flurries and white outs. We sailed past the Chilean Base which is on a very small granite peninsula which they share with a few thousand Gentoo penguins it was very pretty and these are very cute penguins, you can’t miss the base as they have their flag painted on it. The team from Palmer Station were collected by their zodiac for the trip back to the station, with the 8 members plus the 2 who came to collect them it was very squashed for the 30-minute ride back, I don’t envy them it looked freezing out in the open seas.