Argentina/Antarctica: Day 7: Half Moon Island and Deception Island

The day started very early, 5:30 to be exact, for a pre-breakfast zodiac cruise around a place called Edinburgh Hill, a balsatic-columned dome. What is that you ask? Well, from what I can remember, when volcanoes form, lava pools in horizontal layers, but the cooling off process is vertical affair. So long columns of rock form, which is actually evidence of the cooling process. To me, it seems completely nonsensical; I mean, why aren't the rocks horizontal. But I'm not a geologist, so I just have to take their word for it. At 5:30 in Antarctica on day after the longest day of year, the sun is already pretty high, so even though it was pretty early, it didn't seem early at all, as you can tell by the pictures. If you look closely at the second picture, you see the columns of rock.

After breakfast, we landed on Half Moon Island, another South Shetland Island to do some more animal watching. There were gentoo and chinstrap penguins. I've posted a few pictures, one a close-up of a chinstrap, and the other one of my favorite pictures, which shows two lone penguins walking through the snow. They look so lonely, even though I know that they're walking back to a huge colony. This island was also one of the few places where we saw newly hatched chicks. So I've posted a photo of one, which you can see under his mother or father's body. We also saw our first Weddell Seals here. They were just lying around. Ian, one of our guides, told us that he had never seen Weddell seals so thin. It's hard to say whether it's normal or not, but they did look thinner than I expected. We spent a long time walking around and looking at stuff. It's amazing how fascinating just sitting around and watching animals in their own habitats can be. It's really different than being in a zoo, I have to say.

After lunch, we went to Deception Island, a major stop for most cruises to the Antarctic Peninsula. Deception Island is an actual volcano, still active. In the early part of the 20th century, Norway had a whaling station here, and hundreds of thousands of baleen whales were processed here. The station was functional until 1931, and then in 1969 the volcano erupted and lava and ash destroyed most of the structures. There are still, however, remnants of a few buildings and some of the tankers where processed whale blubber was stored.

The passage into Deception Island is through a channel called Neptune's Bellows, and it is a notoriously difficult passage to get through. In 2007, for example, a cruise ship ripped it's hull as the captain tried to get through. Luckily for us, the weather was seriously amazing. It was so calm and really warm, for Antarctica, which meant not only could we get in, but we spent a really pleasant afternoon there.

Like Barrientos Island, Deception is pretty free from ice and snow, at least where we hiked, and most of it is lava rock. There is a sulfur hot spring at the edges of the shoreline, which during a certain time of the tide can be turned into a little hot tub. Eerie steam comes off of the beach, and I have so good pictures of penguins walking through it. Some people, including Greg, decided to take a little plunge in the Antarctic waters. I chose not to; I couldn't think of a good reason to get so cold. Greg said is whole body turned numb when he dove in, but hysterically, it didn't stop him from taking a few back strokes as opposed to everyone else who rushed out of the water. Greg missed the hot tub because the tide wasn't right.

We also hiked around getting some good pictures of the caldera and the ship. And then when we got back, they had hot chocolate and rum waiting for us.

3 excursions on one day was a lot! But it was totally worth it, and I was getting into the Antarctic experience. But the next day, we were to go onto the continent itself, and I was very excited.