Minke Whale Says Hello

While nothing eventful happened in the early morning, today was a very exciting day. After breakfast, we went onshore to take a group picture. We didn’t stay onshore long, as it was another penguin colony and by now we are ODing on all the penguins. In the afternoon, we had almost too much excitement to handle. We made another continental landing, where we on the actual continent as opposed to ice shelves, and we walked amongst even more penguins.

As I was wearing a penguin hat, I wanted to see if the penguins would come up to me if I sat down—so I did! Eventually, brave penguins started to walk towards me, as I was sitting extremely still. Below is a picture I took of one of them—without my camera’s zoom!

After about an hour of sitting and photographing the penguins, we took a zodiac tour around the Nikko Harbor. We covered a lot of ground and came across a Weddell seal sitting on some ice.  The seal was snoozing—we could even hear it snoring!—but eventually it looked up to see who was around.

On the way back to the boat our zodiac driver/whale expert, Mike, heard that there was a spotting of an Antarctic minke whale. Suddenly, we saw the whale’s dorsal fin and waited around for the whale to surface. Eventually, the whale popped up right by our zodiac!

I have never been closer to a whale, even on a whale-watching trip, and being able to look straight into the eye of a whale was truly one of the best experiences of my life. I almost wish this was our last day in Antarctica because this would have been the perfect ending to a great trip, but we will see what tomorrow brings! On the way back to the ship, we were treated to this wonderful landscape...