It snowed pretty much all night, so we awoke to the decks covered in snow and a view of the fast ice where we parked the National Geographic Endurance overnight. This morning we got a chance to explore the fast ice. Everyone had lots of fun taking photos of themselves “pulling” the ship using the bow line. We had a nice large area to explore and plenty of snow angels were created and photos of the reflections made in sunglasses and goggles. Some decided to get their daily steps in doing loops of the area we had created. During the morning we also had visits from some curious Adelie penguins and a number of South Polar skuas flying by. It was snowing most of the morning adding to the ambiance of the whole experience.
Once we were away from the island, the weather almost immediately changed to sun and calm seas as we meandered our way through the ice floes from the broken-up pack ice. We saw quite a few crabeater and Weddell seals and even an additional Ross seal. Naturally there were numerous Adelie penguins, but we continued to see the odd emperor penguin also. We had classic Antarctic weather as we headed north with sunny skies interspersed with snow squalls. During the afternoon, Naturalist Katya Uryupova gave an interesting presentation “Lost in Antarctica: Meteorites.”
The day ended on a real high with a fun party for everyone down in the garage with live music from the one and only National Geographic Endurance crew band: The Shackletoons.
