February 9th continued

Dena wanted me to mention to all of you this poor lone penguin that she spotted high up upon the skree slopes of this volcano. Penguins don't normally hang out at Deception Island because there is not much food and there are no rocky outcroppings. They like to lay and nest on rocks. They build their nests out of small rocks and pebbles. They even steal each others rocks. It's very humorous, anyways, this poor penguin must have been lost. He was about 1000' up on the escarpment, all alone on this very steep hill. How in the world he got up there I don't know but we've seen penguins climb up some pretty gnarly rocks since we've been here. The trick I think in this penguins world is how he's going to get down. Dena is worried and wanted him rescued but you cannot touch or interfere with anything.....


Also, on the subject of temperature, it is quite warm here in general. At Deception Island I was walking around with no hat, no gloves, took my scarf off and unzipped my jacket. I'm not sure the temperature but it was gorgeous! We've had wonderful weather since we hit the South Shetland Islands. We are very fortunate.


I believe I'm going to have to start lagging these blogs as there is so much going on that I don't want to overwhelm you. I know I'm overwhelmed. The pace is almost frantic from early morning til usually 7 or 8 o'clock and then it quiets down. Our daily program this morning said that today is February 10th and it's a Sunday. I had no idea it was Sunday. But forget Feb 10th, I still have more to tell you about yesterday evening.

We were sitting in the lounge after dinner decompressing, drinking our cocktails when I decided to take a quick run up to the bridge for a course plot. I like to keep track on my map the exact course the ship takes. When I was up there a whale was spotted. It became evident quickly (by the fact that they woke the captain) that they were going to stop and watch this humpback mother and calf so I ran to get Dena and Arlene. We were not prepared for going on deck for an extended period of time. It was quite warm so walking on deck with just a fleecy is quite comfortable for about 5 minutes but any longer than that you need a jacket. We spent an hour on deck watching with awe as the mother surface fed, breached and her calf followed her around. Dena, who has blisters on her heels was wearing flip flops. After an hour Dena's feet were frozen, Arlene's fingers were blue but we were giddy with glee at how close they were. We certainly didn't need binoculars.