Jan. 9...It has been a week since we began our expedition. We are seeing much of what we came for. This morning while we were savoring an extra cup of coffee at breakfast and planning our day, a pod of whales surfaced on the starboard side of the ship like a submarine pushing water aside.
During lunch, a huge humpback played at the stern of the ship, breeching time and time again. When he dived he flipped his tail at us. What an awesome sight!
Gentoo penguins were having a ball, diving and swimming and splashing in the bay. They are so awkward on land but in the water they are as streamlined as a bullet, and they move accordingly.
Icebergs dot the waters of the bay. Some have calved off the walls of glaciers. They are tinged with the prettiest of blue edges and if you look closely at them you can see that they are mostly under water. Fresh water ice floating in sea water suggests that 89 percent of it is below the surface. We remember the fate of the Titanic.
The weather is fantastic. It is 6 degrees Celsius (above zero Celsius!) and there is no wind. I won’t even need gloves on shore.
This afternoon we will get to Port Lockroy, an anchorage where British sailors in WWII kept an eye on enemy shipping this far south. Today it is part of the Antarctic Heritage Trust and is a museum.
We will get our passports stamped here–not many people have passports with an Antarctic stamp in it! We can also mail postcards from here but we’ll likely beat them home by two or three months.
The entire class vows they will return someday, somehow. Once you get the Antarctic “fever” you find yourself drawn back to its vastness, its magnificent beauty and its solemn majesty. Maybe it is God’s way of drawing us closer to Him.
Terry Flower
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