I got up at the wonderful time of 4:40am to catch the 5:00 am Antarctic sunrise this morning, and I was greeted with Antarctic weather. Antarctica has a lot of constant cloud cover and this morning was particularly overcast giving myself and the rest of the sunrise club no more than a slight pink haze in the clouds. We did however have the chance to gaze upon the large chain of mountains that were running along our port side. I also learned many of them also happened to be active volcanoes. Who would have thought there’d be volcanoes in Antarctica.
Around lunch time we arrived at Elephant Island. The Island was a lot larger than I had imagined and it has a very cinematic, mystic feel to it as you approach it. We were incredibly lucky to have such perfect weather and to have seen so much of the island. Elephant Island is a 3 way intersection for of 3 main currents including the Drake Passage, the Bransfield strait and the Weddell Sea, making this island the epitome of bad weather in Antarctica. Our guide was telling us that as a result there is typically only a 35% chance of actually seeing the island.
Atop the island sat the endurance glacier that stretched nearly to the sea and carried lots of boulders and debris along with it.
The nearby Ice shelf was 150ft at it’s lowest point and stretched the long distance between the two main mountain peaks.
We observed the magnificent scenery for a couple hours before heading out. As we left the Sun came out making the South Shetland Islands very visible and bringing out the Wildlife with it. In the period of about 20 minutes I saw Seals, Orcas and Penguins, and the penguins just kept coming afterwards.
Overall a very exciting and breathtaking day!
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