Antartica Day 2: More Drake Passage

Weather: 5 Degrees Celsius, Windy! Super Windy!

We're due to start seeing icebergs this afternoon! I literally can't conatin my excitement! I have a goal on this trip: Lick an iceberg. Should be simple. Diving has its benefits.

Estimated arrival at the Antarctic Peninsula is around 7pm. We're having much bigger swells today, we definitely had stuff falling off our desks all night (whoops!)! They've designed the cabins quite intelligently. The desk drawers and cupboards have locking handles, the chair is bungeed in place, the beds have raised sides to brace yourself when the boat's a-rockin'. Of course, if you're like me, and when you travel you like to unpack your luggage and lay things out nicely for later use - yeah, that doesn't work on this type of trip. Mental note, shove everything into drawers and cupboards.

Don't judge my travel habits. Or my kickass shirt.

We have a big pile of orientations today for our shore landings, diving, AND - most important of all - vacuuming all our clothing (especially any pockets or velcro) in preparation for shore excursions! This is to prevent any foreign materials from being introduced to Antarctica - that would not be a good time. They even go so far as to provide you with rubber boots for the excursions, that you then scrub down and sterilize every time you get back to the boat - to prevent from bringing anything back, but also - penguin poop. Rumor has it you can smell them before you see them. I'll report back on that one.

We met our dive group today, awesome group of guys!! They'll get along with us crazy Canucks just fine! Still waiting to hear if we'll be staging gear in the rear hold or the helicopter hangar - I'm hoping for the hangar!

Off to lunch and briefings!

-Sab

UPDATE:

OK - we finished up our dive briefings for the day, had dinner, popped out onto the deck to see what was up. Weather was misty and foggy, getting chillier, VERY windy. BUT - WE SAW OUR FIRST ICE BERG! See that tiny little white speck below? It's a baby iceberg! Squee! Some other folks saw a whale. That's cool too, I guess.

It just looks small. It's not actually that small. There's a phallic joke in there somewhere.

Ok. Enough excitement over a piece of floating sea ice (SO EXCITED!), time for bed. We have some diving to do tomorrow!

Hugs and icebergs,

-Sab

#Antarctica #ColdWater #SaltWater #DiveTravel