Friday 16th February
Buenos Aires
We had a tour of the city in three buses. Here we stopped at a large square in the centre.
This pink building is houses the administrative offices used by the government, including the president.
It was very warm, I was keen to move on to the cooler climate further south.
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One of stops on the tour was in Bocha, a poor suburb of BA, where Diego Maradona grew up and where he started his football career.
I didn't feel like strolling around, there were too many people out trying to get money from tourists, but I did give £20 to a local fire brigade group (I assume they were genuine).
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Monday 19th February
We boarded the Island Sky on Saturday at Ushuaia.
This is a 360 degree panorama showing my cabin, number 334. It's identical to the one I had back in 2019.
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Well, at last we saw our first iceberg. It caused a bit of excitement and a lot of photographing.
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Tuesday 20 February
AM: Half Moon Island.
PM: Deception Island.
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Our first Zodiac landing.
Our ship is anchored off the tiny Half Moon island, which is located just north of the much larger Livingston Island.
We went ashore on Zodiacs and did a brief walk, with restrictions, to see the small number of Chinstrap Penguins which remained here.
There were also a few seals around. The bleached remains of a whaling boat lie on the beach.
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A lichen covered rock formation makes a nice photographic opportunity, with Livingston Island in the background.
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A lone Skua stands on a neighbouring rock.
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Glaciated and rugged basaltic island scenery, typical of the South Shetland Islands which lie north of the Antarctic Peninsula,
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Greenwich Island.
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A Chinstrap penguin.
There wasn't a lot of activity in the small colony we found - probably due to the penguins going through the moulting process before they returned to the sea.
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A rare Gentoo found on the beach.
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This fella looks like he/she has had a bit of an accident with a Krill takeaway dinner.
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This looks like another shot of Livingston Island, from one of the ship's research team.
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A seal having a snooze in the old whaler's boat on the beach.
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Tuesday afternoon.
We depart for a short sail to Whaler's Bay on the enigmatic Deception Island.
Our second Zodiac landing.
After landing, we went off in groups to climb a slope with views out to the open sea.
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Me in the blue hat after the climb up the slope.
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Here, Fur seals play-fight on the beach.
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A Skua looks for food on the shoreline.
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Deception Island actually lives on top of an underground volcanic caldera.
The island encloses a lake, and is only accessible to small ships from a narrow opening in the southwest at Neptune's Bellows.
There was an eruption as recent as August 1970, which led to mudslides which damaged storage tanks and other infrastructure at Whaler's Bay.
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Another view of where the post-eruption mud slides in 1970 swept away parts of the old whaling station.
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We reboard the ship to sail south to other islands and get under way.
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Neptune's Bellows is the gap in the centre of this picture, which leads out to the ocean.
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Wednesday 21st February
Fournier Bay, on the eastern part of Anvers Island in the Palmer Archipelago.
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An early start for a zodiac tour of the icy bay in which seals, whales and seabirds were present.
This image shows our zodiac driven by Conrad, I am sitting in the front, starboard.
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There were many icebergs floating in the bay, producing some very aesthetically pleasing shapes, with many shades of blue and grey, such as the one in this image.
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In a rare close-up sighting, a humpback whale breaks the surface before a dive.
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Another iceberg in Fournier Bay.
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A fur seal resting on sea-ice.
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The nose of a humpback whale above the surface - this was rarely seen, but captured by one of the research team with a decent camera.
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A Chinstrap penguin on a small iceberg.
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A flock of Southern Fulmars flying low over the bay.
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A view of the small rocky island at Port Lockroy, with the post office and accomodation buildings after renovation.
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Rock formations at the Port Lockroy island with members of the Gentoo penguin colony.
We weren't allowed to land on this island due to the prescence of penguins around the small post office building there, but staff members did set up a sales counter on the ship, where souvenirs could be purchased.
I took out a year's sponsorship of a penguin chick, though I wasn't to know which penguin I had sponsored and whether it was going to be safe from apex predators.
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Down south in the South Shetlands, the island landscapes are hauntingly harsh, with deep glaciers and snow capped rocky peaks.
Possibly never to have seen human boots walking on them.
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Thursday 22 February
Palmer Station on Anvers Island. (US Research Station)
The ship's cruise director had contacted this station and they agreed to give us a tour around the base.
There wasn't a great deal of interest to see, as bird flu restrictions had prohibited visitors into the buildings.
We arrived on zodiacs as usual and were shown around the open air parts of the complex.
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Grant on his zodiac, with the station's loading ramp in the background.
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Another view of the base with communication mast and outbuildings.
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This is a Snowy Sheathbill.
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Adelie penguins were not widely spotted on our trip, but there were some of them on the dirty snow next to the station.
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A group of Elephant Seals in their usual resting pose.
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The rugged beauty of the Antarctic Peninsula.
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This is one of the most important members of the food chain in the Southern Ocean.
A specimen of the shrimp Krill, as eaten by certain penguins, seals, seabirds and whales.
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The tail fluke of a humpback whale seen in the area.
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The ship's photographers did take a few photos with me in them.
Here I'm typically dressed out on deck without a coat, which was noticed by one or two people during the trip!
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Another striking example of an iceberg.
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A Gentoo penguin observes from its rock, another of those strange rubber boats full of humans.
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