{"id":7279,"date":"2024-01-07T16:36:53","date_gmt":"2024-01-07T21:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=7279"},"modified":"2024-01-07T16:39:26","modified_gmt":"2024-01-07T21:39:26","slug":"happy-new-year-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=7279","title":{"rendered":"Happy new year!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What a memorable New Year\u2019s! We had dinner with a fun group of folks on NY Eve, but skipped the dance party in favor of sleep. We were out early the next day to visit the aptly named Penguin Island in the South Shetland Islands where we saw the darling chinstrap penguins. The ship moved to Admiralty Bay in the afternoon and we did more Zodiac touring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day we landed on President\u2019s Head where we saw lots of elephant seals. The afternoon took us to Deception Island – named because it is not really an island but a volcano top. We pulled into Whalers\u2019 Bay and wandered around there looking at the old station, and of course, penguins \u2014 plus a bonus leopard seal taking it easy on the beach. That evening as we were sailing, a few of us were lucky enough to see a few pilot whales! (And yes, a naturalist was with me to verify the identification!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On January 3, we landed on Danco Island. Instead of hiking up the icy hill to see the penguin colony, John and I jumped in a Zodiac and took a tour of the beautiful bay instead. We went on to Neko Harbor in the afternoon. The footing in the snow and ice felt better to me and with two ski poles, we made our way up the hill to see the penguins against the blue backdrop of a glacier – stunning! In route, we came across of large pod of orcas, those gorgeous black and white \u201ckiller whales\u201d (actually dolphins).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the fourth, we started across the Drake Passage – there was a bit of swell, but luckily John and I never experienced any seasickness. The next day, the water was almost still. When we pulled into the Beagle Channel, I saw lots of dolphins!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Map of our route<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the week we attended lectures and had fun with our fellow passengers. Alas we didn\u2019t win trivia night, but had fun trying!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Amanda, Elsie, Anthony, John, Jim, Lawrence<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Dinner: our fun waiter,Sue (from Arkansas), John, Paul, Debbie, Ruth, me, Yaron, Gaby<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sadly we disembarked on the morning of the sixth. Our tour bus took us on a tour around the small town of Ushuaia, then we toured a fascinating old prison that was turned into a museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The old prison museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We thoroughly enjoyed the trip! We really enjoyed our fellow passengers, the crew, and the A&K naturalists. I spent a lot of time with binoculars in hand, either in the observation lounge or bundled up outside – I couldn\u2019t bear the thought of missing a sighting of wildlife and it paid off \u2014 I was the only person on board who saw the three rarely sighted marine mammals: hourglass dolphins, beaker whales, and pilot whales! This was really an amazing experience! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In my happy place!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a memorable New Year\u2019s! We had dinner with a fun group of folks on NY Eve, but skipped the dance party in favor of sleep. We were out early the next day to visit the aptly named Penguin Island in the South Shetland Islands where we saw the darling chinstrap penguins. The ship moved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7279"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7279"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7290,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7279\/revisions\/7290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}