Pictures from Antarctica
View Antarctica Picture slideshow . Note slideshow may take a minute to download all of the pictures. It is approximately 87MB of data.
After leaving Ushuaia we headed south across the Drake passage towards Antarctica. Some of the lighting on the pictures needs some editing. We'll try to improve them over the next few weeks.
As we approached the first land mass we ran into a school of Humpback whales.
After the whales we passed by Elephant Island which is where Ernie Shackleton survived his historic Antarctic exploration in 1901. The skies cleared as we reached the island.
After leaving elephant island we continued down the tail of Antarctica towards Hope Bay.
Here's a link to some Antarctica video. Please forgive some of the camera work. I haven't edited out some of the areas where you can see the fish-eye lens.
Along the way we passed some very large flat top icebergs. These are created by the stop winds of the Antarctic and cannot be found elsewhere on Earth. The large blue crack is as tall as our ship. That will provide some perspective the sheer size of these icebergs
As the sun began to set we arrived in the
beautiful and calm Hope Bay
area. As we entered the area we passed hi a Chilean research facility with
the buildings painted red so they can be seen in the winter. As we were
leaving the area we caught an iceberg load down with penguins hitching a ride.
Click here to see close up.
After leaving Hope Bay we continued heading south heading towards Palmer
Station, located 64.77°S .
Palmer Station is a
US research facility located on Antarctica. As we got within about 200
miles of Palmer Station it began to snow.
Unfortunately as we continued towards Palmer Station the weather turned bad and we had to head back across the Drake Passage. We came out through an ice field and were cutting ice for about 6 hours. Along the way we say various wild life floating on the ice.
