Tuesday 19 November 2013

It’s so nice in the ice!!!!!!!!!!

Our last day in Antarctica has been an icy day. Even the temperature has been around 0 degree Celsius; just the right temperature for snow. Millions and billions of ice crystals were falling out of huge grey clouds; clumping together to a bigger construction which we call snowflakes. The ship was covered with a nice white blanket of snow and we could hear, here and there the question: “should we build a snowman?” But we had no time, we had to keep track of the landscape covered with amazing glaciers, watch the sea, covered with icebergs and the rest of the sea ice from the last winter. 

It is unbelievable that each glacier, each floating ice sheet started its “life” out of little tiny ice crystals. You get crazy when you start to think about all these structures. And did you know at home that there are not two ice crystals on earth which look the same on earth? Even though all ice crystals have a hexagonal structure; they are so different like our fingerprints are not the same.




As there was so much ice in at the sea we were not able to land at the Argentinian station Base Brown. However, our expedition leader Anja changed the program directly and we started a wonderful and impressive PolarCircel boat cruise for everybody. It is unbelievable how different the icy landscape looks with the view from our little boats. To see everything just from the sea level gives us such a different imagination of this icy landscape.

FriedaPhoto
FriedaPhoto
In the afternoon we reached Neko Harbour. Here we got the possibility to step our feet on the Antarctic mainland. Hundreds of Gentoo Penguins greeted us. It is still the mating time. As everything is more or less still covered with snow the penguins had no possibility to build their nest made out of little pebbles until now. We started our landing in the snow, but later on the sun came through and everything glittered so nicely as if the scenery would be covered with millions of diamonds.




FriedaPhoto

Some passengers made the decision to go kayaking in front of these amazing glaciers. They got a marvelous impression and nature feeling they will never ever forget. 


Other passengers took the opportunity to go on a 90 minute PolarCircelBoat cruise. One of the highlights on the cruise was being able to watch a huge Leopard Seal, resting on an ice sheet.

FriedaPhoto

FriedaPhoto

FriedaPhoto
On what was our last day in this wonderful part of our earth, Antarctica could not say “Good Bye” in a better way.