During our cruise we saw 3 varieties of seals: Fur, Crabeater, and Leopard. Contrary to their name these seals all make krill the bulk of their diet. All varieties have a single pup per year. The females mate almost immediately after giving birth but can hold the fertilized egg in suspended animation for a few…

Since 1961 Antarctica has been governed by the Antarctic Treaty System which sets aside Antarctica as an area for peaceful scientific endeavors with no nation having territorial rights. Territorial claims have been tabled at this time. 29 nations have established over 80 research stations conducting actual scientific programs. Additional treaties have dealt with environmental responsibilities…

Obviously, when you think of the Antarctic, you visualize ice. The Antarctic is the driest place on earth. This was difficult for me to grasp at first, since there is a lot of ice and snow. The truth is that it DOES snow here a little each year (very little) but since that snow does…

It is hard to photograph whales because you very seldom see their whole bodies. In fact Ron never did see a full body during this trip. Paul, however, happened to be looking in exactly the right spot at the right time and watched a humpback whale rise out of the water showing about 2/3rds of…

One could never imagine the number of penguins there are in the Antarctic. At the Argentinian Research station we saw over 100,000! But long before you see these cute and appealing little animals, you smell them (think overflowed toilet stool on a hot summer day. Ugh!). We often saw groups of penguins ( a group…

We’ve just spent the last 4 days in Antarctica cruising around the Antarctic peninsula. The track of our journey is represented by the yellow/green line shown in the image below. Even though it appears small, some of the distances between points are measured in hours. The morning of day 29 we had our first views…

Ushuaia is a surprisingly large and modern city and proudly calls itself the End of the World (fin del Mundo). It has a population of 80,000 and is constantly growing. We arrived early in the morning and looking out at the colorful city, we could see a rainbow. This cruise is scheduled so we visit…

Shortly after leaving Punta Arenas we re-joined the Beagle Channel and traveled most of the morning thru the section known as “Glacier Alley”. There were 5 glaciers that we could see from the ship and a few others that were on side channels that we couldn’t see. Sadly as Paul mentioned in the previous blog,…

Punta Arenas is the southernmost city on the mainland. We will visit Ushuaia, Argentina, in a couple of days, which is located closer to the Antarctic, but it is located on an island. You must take a ferry across the Straits of Magellan in order to connect with the mainland. We are excited about today’s…

Today are up early as we cruise by two glaciers, the Amalia and Brujo Glaciers (shown below) that looked very similar. In the Prinsendam, the captain was able to pull up very close to the glacier so we could see the beautiful deep blue color of the packed ice. Each of the glaciers we have…