66°33′ South

Beautiful fullish moon last night – was up around 2:30 as we retraced our steps thru The (narrow) Gulch. 

Stunning weather all day for flight-seeing and zodiac cruising.

Very impressed with operations side of this company and after today, the trip seems like a bargain rather than an extravagance.

They pulled into the iceberg littered bay in front of gorgeous mountains and glaciers this morning – weather was sunny and cloudless. They set up helicopter, zodiac and sea kayak operations and managed, in turn, to get all 185 passengers in the sky and on the water throughout the day. 

I was on the 4th flight of the day with Simon piloting the helicopter. It’s a 15 minute flight that everyone does as part of the expedition – fortunately I added an extra “heli-landing” tour when I booked two years ago so get another shot at this.

After the flight there was anything to do for six hours except stare at the beauteous landscape.

Late in the afternoon we hit the water with ornithologist Fabrice.

The Adelie penguins only come to land to breed and moult – the rest of the year they are in the water or on ice floes. After the chicks leave the nest mom and dad fatten up so they can be safely on land while they moult. Moulting being the process of growing out a new set of feathers. Today we could see many ragged looking birds hanging about.

Other wildlife sightings: humpback whales galore, shags, a lone chinstrap who turned his back on us and pooped in our direction, Antarctica fur seals, Weddell seals, petrels and skuas.