Last Days – Laura

Last days – Last days for anything are bittersweet – last days of vacations, last days of school… And Antarctica is no different. While on one hand we are eager to cross the Drake and get home, on the other, Antarctica always has a hold on us and even up until the end keeps throwing amazing surprises at us.

Yesterday, while it was fairly grey and dreary, we had Cuverville Island, more or less to ourselves, minus our friends on the Hans Hanson. This time of year Cuverville couldn’t be more alive with life. Seals. They were so active! Often you just see crabeater seals hauled out on a small iceberg, which they were here and in massive numbers. Each iceberg seemed to have 10, 15, maybe 20 seals and in the field of icebergs around Cuverville, there were at least 5 or 6 or 7 icebergs filled with crabeaters. And they were having fun as well – groups of 3 and 4 playing in the water, swimming around Ocean Tramp to check us out. On shore there were plenty of fur seals grunting, fighting putting on a show. All of this we could watch from where we were anchored. Then it started to snow…

In the late afternoon as the snow / wind / rain abated we all went ashore where gentoos were buzzing with life. Groups of 10 would waddle along the cobble beach, then all together enter the water to swim. Because of how the shoreline is here you can easily watch the penguins swimming in the water, free and graceful. At Cuverville, with its long broad beach everyone was able to wander to find a place of their own to watch and take it all in. Even though the skies were grey, the result was that the brilliant white icebergs stood as a stark contrast. What a last evening.

And then we woke up to perfect blue skies and no wind. As we were preparing the deck for the Drake, a Leopard seal came over to visit – how graceful the Leopard seals move in the water. For those of you who haven’t seen it – I highly recommend watching Paul Nicklin’s TED talk where he has amazing stories and photographs of Leopard seals. A TED Talk not to be missed.

And so with a backdrop of blue skies, porpoising penguins, and quartz-like icebergs floating in the distance we say goodbye to Antarctica for this season. Catch you on the other side of the Drake.

Laura