Deception Island and Half Moon Island

We had just started moving around the cabin this morning when they announced that we were going to enter Neptune’s Bellows, the entrance to Deception Island. It is a very narrow entrance made more difficult by a large submerged rock near the middle; there is only about 100M clear passage. Large ships cannot enter. We anchored soon after at Whaler’s bay; which was used for whale processing in the early 1900’s. Many of the structures are still standing and we were greeted by our little penguin friends. The black sand beach was filled with small icebergs of many shapes that had washed up. This is an active volcanic caldera and there is warm water running down the beach into the bay - this is the location where a number of the passengers went ice swimming (they received a certificate). The two pictures here show us older folks in our group all dressed in our warm clothes and the two younger ones that braved the 32 degree water.

Through the afternoon we cruised through many icebergs large and small but I thought this tabular iceberg was the most impressive - this was shot out our cabin window, but you get the idea. It was estimated at 1200 ft long and 110 ft high above water. The rectangular shape was really interesting. Most of the others were the more common varying shapes and shades of blues like you usually see in pictures.

Late afternoon we anchored at Half Moon Island which was the landing we missed on the first day when the weather was very bad. It was beautiful; I’m really glad they could fit it in at the end. Right where we got out of the small boats there were two large seals lying in the snow having a nap. The expedition staff put orange traffic cones to keep people back 15 ft. They are pretty impressive creatures. I headed up to the closest penguin area and Jim took the much longer hike to some other areas. The hour seemed to go by pretty quickly - maybe it was because we knew this was our last landing. I you look closely at the picture, you can see the egg. We have taken hundreds of photos… I have enough penguin pictures to keep me happy for a long time. (at least until our Grand Voyage leaving in January where we will also have some places to see penguins)

That’s it for now. In the next entry I’ll tell more about the ship and the voyage.