66°33′ South

My first rerun visit on the cruise was this morning at Deception Island. A narrow passage allows ships to enter the caldera of a sunken volcano – last time we just did a sail around in the caldera, today we got to land. It was formerly a seal & whaling station similar to Gritvyken on South Georgia Island then used as a military post. In 1967/69 an eruption put an end to occupation but traces of whale processing remain.

I spent the entire landing time taking pics of the rusted tanks, some with beautiful bright green moss. It’s a bit warmer here so green things can thrive if protected from the wind.

At our lunch recap we were, amongst other things, tantalized with a $1,500 discount on a future trip, educated on the mechanics of whale feeding and, best of all, Fabrice talked about penguin poo. Red = krill diet, white = fish diet, green = no diet or bile. This is deposited by the pengies when they are on land moulting and not eating. He then shared an amusing selection of poo pics that were worthy of Jackson Pollock and cropped them to fit in a frame hanging in a designer living room pic.  I think Fabrice is everyone’s favourite lecturer.

Final, sadly, landing was at Hannah Point on Livingstone Island.

We are fortunate to access this island as it is of bounds in the first half of the season – wildlife is too dense to tolerate humans. Also, mating elephant seals should always be avoided.

Chinstraps, gentoos, petrel chicks as big as a turkeys and elephant seals. Chinstraps are definitely the least attractive moulters!

…also saw some fin whale (second largest whales) spouts en route to Livingstone Island.

I can’t un-see  the cartoon dog/ snowman in this full frontal view.

We had a shortish last zodiac ride back to the ship that took in some immense juvenile elephant seals. They are a curious animals – the males fight fiercely for the right to mate every spring but after that’s out of the way they all cuddle up together on the beach like a giant blob.

And with that, we head back to Ushuaia – wonder what the Drake has in store for us.