Our Travel Stories

This was our last day in Antartica, and our expedition team wanted one last landing. So we arrived at Cuverville island known for hosting the largest gentoo colony in the Peninsula. We were all given a choice of long landing, short landing with zodiac cruise or just a zodiac cruise. We settled on doing both.

Though the island is known for gentoo colony, there are always seals around.

But the stars of this outing were gentoos. There were many..

They were funny, curious and very active. They feel like little children. One could sit watching them forever.

Sometimes you couldn’t tell what was so fascinating..

Then there were those miserably waiting to complete molting

After spending time on land we got in a zodiac for scenic cruising. The rugged snow/glacier capped mountains and volcanic rocks made for spectacular scenery.

There were also many icebergs dotting the waters.

We also came across another leopard seal hunting a penguin and this time I did shoot some video.

More fascinating are the gentoos porpoising over water. They are very fast and it is not the best video, but here it is.

And here is a gentoo mid-porpoise.

The seals were super cute too.

As we headed back to the ship, we ran into another humpback whale.

While we had our lunch, the ship cruised to Fournier Bay. This bay is known for its calm waters, abundant wildlife and beautiful scenery. So, this is a popular spot with most cruises that come to Antarctic peninsula.

We chose a zen zodiac for our last outing. We wanted to soak in the beauty and store these precious memories for always.

Our guide chose out of the way locations to cruise through for some solitude.

We also came across a seal on ice.

As we cruised along we came across a peaceful setting with serene scenery and couple of humpbacks sleeping

Things changed dramatically when a whale gave a call to few other whales for feeding. The humpbacks work together to create a cauldron that pushes all the krill together and then they come up to feed. The first you see are bubbles. Here is some part of feeding whales.

It is tough to get a stable video in a zodiac and we are definitely amateurs.

After watching whale feeding for a while we decided to go back to the area with sleeping whales and spend 10 minutes meditating.

It was very peaceful with music of ice crackling and whale blows in our background.

That was pretty much the end and we headed back to the ship. As we turned back a whale suddenly came up right behind me. I shot a quick photo but I couldn’t fit the whale with the telephoto lens on my camera.

That capped our experiences and we got back on ship happy and sad at the same time. We will miss this magical place and this amazing trip.

We chose to have dinner on the uppermost deck on this last day in Antartica. As the ship cruised away, the sun was setting and we had beautiful alpenglow on the snow-capped mountains.

However, fog was rising, and as the sun set, it all disappeared like an enchanted place full of mysteries. Here now for a moment, but you look again and it is all gone.