Antarctica had always felt like a distant and unreachable bucket list destination, not just because of its geographical location, but more so because it is so expensive. Honestly, I never thought it'd be possible for me to check off this bucket list item but we decided to make this trip happen and celebrated our 10th anniversary with an extraordinary adventure to the end of the earth - Antarctica! I am so grateful for the opportunity to finally step foot on my 7th continent and to experience this incredible journey with our moms.
13D12N Antarctica Cruise - Oceanwide Basecamp Expedition
5-7 December 2023: Drake Passage & Disembarkation
4 December 2023 (Mon): Day 10 - Cuverville Island
Our final day in Antarctica was a good recap of all the things we did and saw in Antarctica over the past 6 amazing days.
Early morning start at 6.30am for our last zodiac cruise and landing on this trip as we were trying to leave Antarctica earlier to get ahead of the bad weather.
Our final landing site was Cuverville Island...and it began with our final snowshoe hike up the hill for a panoramic view of the bay.
Couldn't miss out saying goodbye to our penguin friends. There were so many penguins here!
Some penguins were waddling clumsily up and down the hilll, while some were swimming gracefully in the waters. I was impressed how these penguins hike up this hill persistently with their short legs.
We didn't notice this while we were there but can you spot the love-shaped penguin colony? That's so cool! Even the penguins were sending us off with love. <3
Hiked back down to the shore to watch the penguins being funny on their penguin highways.
We've seen quite a lot of penguins throughout this trip but we saw the most penguins here.
After enjoying ourselves being entertained by clumsy penguins, it was time fro our last round of zodiac cruise at 8am. Our expedition guide for this zodiac cruise was Sasha.
Hubby cruised with Alexis but since they were buddying, we were cruising together most of the time.
One last round of icebergs as we wove in an out of the endless icebergs.
It was good that we got Sasha as our guide coz he was quiet, which allowed us to soak in the tranquility and peacful surroundings of this white continent for one last time.
Can't miss saying goodbye to our seal friends too! Spotted a few Weddell seals and our first crabeater seal on this trip. I drained my iPhone 15 Pro battery towards the end of this zodiac cruise so had to switch over to my iPhone 13 to capture the crabeater seal.
After completing our final excursion, we headed back to the ship at 9.30am and chilled for the rest of the day as we started our journey towards the Drake Passage. We had been extremely lucky to complete 13 out of 13 activities over the past 6.5 days, which doesn't always happen due to weather conditions.
Even though we were done with all excursions in Antarctica, we still had about 2.5 days on the ship as we would be sailing through the Drake Passage to get back to Ushuaia. When we saw Captain Toni kicking off the daily recap, we kinda figured out what was coming!! Indeed, we were informed that there will be full blown storm (Beaufort scale 10) when we go through the Drake and as per the Captain, "Few of you who are hoping for a Drake Shake, and you are about to get it".
Plated dinner at 7.15pm. The sea state was still quite calm we saw some people who were already struggling at dinner...whoopsie! Thankfully, all of us were feeling good and was able to enjoy dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment