Greetings All - pictures at last

Hi there everyone -

Here are pictures at last. I am still busy sorting and editting the mass of photos we took. We will host a couple of viewing parties, I think. For now - here is a pretty good cross-section of the places and scenes we experienced. I've left out the cities - they just aren't as exciting as ice and penguins!

Thanks for following along and feel free to comment or request something you don't see here!

D&M

And more again...

These are the last ones I will post unless there are special requests for something we haven't shown you.

This is us in front of a Glacier on King George Is., South Shetlands, Antarctica.











This gives you some idea of Charles Darwin and the Beagle in the Beagle Channel. We happened to be in the channel at the same time as this lovely tall ship.








An Example of striped ice. These bergs are often striped. The stripes are formed by layers of silt and algae that land between ice layers as the glacier forms. When they break off you get stripey bergs!

Penguins sporting in the ocean around the boat. We saw thousands of them doing this. These are Chinstrap Penguins near the farthest south point we reached - 65 degrees S latitude. They are very hard to capture in a pic as they are incredibly fast in the water. They reach speeds of 40kph and can dive 300m in less than 2 minutes.

Penguin landscape at a gentoo colony

More pics

Minefield warning sign, Falklands.











Magellanic penguin from Otway Sound, Chile. about an hour's drive from Punta Arenas (Straits of Magellan) . These penguins live like gophers. They dig burrows in the sand and live in a colony and pop up to look around. The adults move back and forth from the ocean to feed chicks. They live underground because unlike most other species, these guys have a terrestrial predator - a Chilean fox. Apparently foxes are smart enough not to mess with a 15" bird in a hole though.

Berg with Hole, Gerlache Strait, Antarctica

Gentoo Chick playing with pebbles, Falklands

Elephant Island. Home to Ernest Shackleton's marooned men for 4 months. They lived on seal and penguin meat and bits of algae and seaweed. It is a bleak spot to say the least.

Photos from the trip

This is Elephant Island. The weather and cloud formations were wonderful. It astonishes us that anyone survived on this desolate place - much less that they did it for 4 months!









This is classic Cape Horn as we rounded it. We have more photos that show the Chilean station and the memorial and whatnot but this is the Horn as seen at the end of the Americas.









This is Glacial Ice in the Neumeyer Channel off the Antarctic Peninsula. This glacier is actively calving as I shot the photo. The blue is real - not the result of weird light or filters. They really are blue and not white.











This is an iceberg landscape from the Bransfield Strait between the Antarctic mainland and the South Shetland islands. Staggeringly beautiful!













A view across the landscape of the Beagle Channel near Ushuaia, Arg. on Tierra del Fuego

Nearly Home

We have now made it as far as Lethbridge in our quest for home. It has been a long trip to say the least. I am eternally grateful to Mom and Dad for providing a bathtub (heaven) and bed (more heaven). We started out at 6am AT+1 getting up and leaving the ship at 7:30. We then took a tour of Valparaiso, Santiago and the wine and veggie growing areas in between the 2 cities. It was really wonderful and informative but at 6:00 that day we were dropped at the airport and then sat around there until our flight was called at 9. We then climbed in the plane and prepared to leave South America behind. It taxied, lined up, powered up, started to run and then shut down, taxied back to the terminal, unloaded the luggage, had a fire sensor in the luggage compartment fixed and finally managed to get out and take off nearly TWO HOURS late. Ugh. 12 hours later we landed in Toronto where we managed to miss our connecting flight because our flight was late and Air Canada (motto: we're not happy till YOU'RE not happy) was inefficient and Customs was indifferent. We then got to stand in a few more lines for a couple hours to reschedule our flight and managed to get on a 10:00 flight so we thought that wasn;t too bad. So we waited, got on our flight, taxied out to the line up of planes (did I mention it was snowing heavily in Toronto?) waiting for deicing and were told we were 15th in line. We then were sent to a DIFFERENT line where we waited some more,finally got deiced (for which we are appropriately grateful) and were allowed to take off - an hour and a half late. After that we had smooth sailing - our flight arrived, my parents were waiting to haul us off, our luggage came out first, we drove to Lethbridge and we are now somewhat rested and ready to take the last leg of the epic journey and drive home.

Within a day or 2 I hope to post a bunch of picture so you can see some of the sights we saw. Thanks for following along and for your comments and patience and all that. Talk you you all soon.

Dale and MArsha

A Nearly Final Word

I am putting up a brief note to say that nothing further will be put up till we get home - we are nearly out of costly internet minutes and after our last day at sea will be starting out at 7:30am for a two city tour of Valparaiso and Santiago. From 8 - 5 we gawk around these two cities then head directly to the airport to our flight that leaves at 9pm. 12 1/2 hours later we will be in Toronto for a 2 hour layover then a flight to Calgary where hopefully some kind relative is waiting at the airport to pick us up and drive us to a nearby bed. I am planning on getting my pics together as soon as possible and will post a bunch to this site when we are home. I am also going to make a powerpoint presentation of them and have a gathering or two to show them off to friends and family so stay tuned for further bulletins as events warrant.

The sun is shining, there are still decks to linger on and of course, at some point I have to face the reality of packing our bags and saying farewells to people on board who've become near and dear in this short time.

See you all on the Canadian side. We're heading home!

Dale and Marsha

Laundry Day - or not

A day at sea. The sun is shining. The water is mellow and the dolphins are sporting around the ship. It is a day to lean back and enjoy the sea air and the nice temperatures before contemplating packing, air travel and winter in Canada. I took opportunity to finish off the last of the postcards today. They bear Chilean stamps and will arrive long after we do but such is the nature of international mail. There have been few ports from which to mail things and after all, we've had things to do and see and can't always be looking around for post boxes when there are penguins to be admired!

Oh - before I forget - those of you who are timing out on your "visitor" status to this site - create an account and the problem goes away! There is no cost to it or anything it is just name and password stuff and easy to do.

Meanwhile - back on the ship. THis afternoon they are preparing for a Captain's reception and Champagne waterfall to be held after 11 pm. Our question is - "Who goes to these things and why?" I would think that the Captain, more than the rest of us, needs his rest and I certainly do not need to see champagne flow down 2 stories of ship. There is an OCEAN out there - and the ANDES and WHALES... perhaps we have been among other tourists a mite too long. The possibility exists. Some of these people do start to wear on one's nerves. As our daytime bartender put it - "it is not you guys, it is the other 4800 cretins..." (he is leaving for at least 4 months and glad of it). There was a near-war in the laundry room yesterday. Someone tried claiming territory by taking another's clothes out of the washer and it caused a fight necessitating security. Seriously folks, who has time to fight over laundry rights? Which leads to the title of today's posting. I thought I would do a load of laundry so I could have squeaky clean clothing to wear for the 3 day trip home. Apparently that is trickier than I anticipated so I may come home slightly offensive. So be it. As my dear friend Cathi told me - it isn't dirty until you get home from the trip. I am taking her advice to heart and think I will go find a nice fruit tart to have with my tea, talk to my new friends one more time and carry on with the mellow business of being on holiday. Besides - the milk and cookie people are out and they have WARM cookies. That is reason enough to adjourn!

Till tomorrow

D&M