Antarctica Day 9: Cuverville Island and Paradise Harbor

Woke up to the announcements that the weather was splendid this day, and we should be able to disembark and zodiak cuverville island. went down to breakfast, had a freshmade omelet, then got our winter gear on as we were one of the first groups to go. We climbed into the zodiak, after 'badging off the boat' and climbed in with 8 other people and were off. The views are absolutely breathtaking, with bright blue icebergs scattered throughout the ocean. A short 8 minute ride and we had arrived to Cuverville Islands, the largest Gentoo penguin rookery in all the Antarctic. It is estimated there were 3600 pairs of breeding gentoo penguins here. And with it being early in the season, many of them were coming in 'rafts' groups of penguins swimming together and arriving to land for the first time in nine months, to breed and raise their young Also with it being early in the season, the snow has not melted everywhere yet, so only a few locations have bare rock which is what is needed to build a penguin nest.

We spent 1 hour 45 minutes on Cuverville Island just soaking in the raw outdoors. The penguins are so hilarious to watch run/waddle around. some will even slide on their bellies. Some will fight with the others over who knows what. There even was a 'confused' adele penguin within the rookery. They are similar to gentoo, but do not have the orange beak and they only have white around their eyes. They bark a much lower baritone sound verses a Gentoo's high squeaky calls.

The mountains in the background covered in glaciers are brilliantly blue, and un touched. I must say having been on the first boat to arrive to Antarctica this season has been ah-mazing. I really feel like the places have been un touched. we were stomping down the snow for the first time on cuverville Island. And the Rookeries don't smell of wretched penguin poop entirely, yet. Imagine, the seal / sea lion / penguin house at the como zoo, but as if it were un cleaned for 3 months. YUCK!

After our time on cuverville, we then loaded up into a zodiak for a cruise circumnavigating the island. Just to the north, is the mainland, antarctic peninsula. and we stopped for a few rafts of penguins, which had to contain hundreds of penguins to arrive to cuverville for the first time :). they were all swimming in the ocean as one, they would go under together and pop their heads out at the same time. then they would fly out of the water and land on their feet, touching ground for the first time in months. Kept our eyes open for some whales but had no luck. Then we completed the circle around the island, and took some breathtaking photos of the gorgeous ice bergs. We even came acorss a seal, not a leopard seal, some other kind, taking a nap while catching some rays. After we sped back to the boat as it was nearly time for lunch.

Enjoyed a light snack, and then picked up our camping gear for possibly tonight, and then we head to the zodiaks for some zodiak cruises around paradise harboer. We saw some nice icebergs and then heard of a whale sighting so we headed that way, only to find another zodiak stuck on top of a rather large iceberg, so we helped get them free and by the time we made it the whales were gone. Turns out they were Arneaux bottlenose whales and are very rarely seen. after two hours on the water, half of which had turned quite frigid, we retreated home to the ship to find out that camping has been canceled for the evening as it had started to snow horribly. We enjoyed a hot cocoa and listened to the recap where they talked about the whales and had video footage of them breaching. it was quite spectacular. Afterwards we enjoyed dinner, with an older gentleman and his son in law, who happens to fly for united. We talked about our return plans, which matches theirs, but we are going to be trying the delta flight first, as of ten days ago it looked wide open so well see when we get back to ushuaia. The night was passed with cribbage and bed time around midnight. which is when the sun sets down here. tomorrow we try camping again, as well as hopefully standing on the actual antarctic peninsula.

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