Day 9 - Blogabond

Today was an early start as we began leaving the ship around 8:30 at Couverville Island. While the island itself was nice -- gentoo penguins, fur seals playing like Sam and Grover, crabeater seals on nearly every ice flow,the highlight was the Humpback Whales. Both before and after our visit to the island, they played with us, coming alongside the zodiac popping up without warning, close enough to touch. Fortunately, I ran out of film and so could concentrate on their movements (although not to save them from for posterity). In particular on the way back two will play with our three zodiacs for over an hour. The spyhopped, flipped, waived with their finds, swam alongside the zodiacs, etc. Once, one even brought his huge eye up and stared at us for several minutes. Spontaneous cheering followed every movement. They even followed us back to the ship and waived good bye with their tail flukes. In was incredible, nothing I could have imagined before I came on this trip.

After lunch, as we sailed further north, we came upon several more whales, including one right whale, which I missed. While we obviously were not as "up close and personal" with these, they did breech for us and did a lot of fin waiving.

We then made a stop near Fayn Harbour, site of a 1920's shipwreck, but our hardy scout troop was unable to find either a place to land or anything interest to see, so we moved on to Charlotte Bay.

The sun came out for a bit and we found some more humpbacks for the zodiacs to play with. This time, however, I stayed on board and got an entirely different view. When the whales were near the boat and close to the surface, you could see their entire bodies. Also, you could follow their movements because you could see their white flippers just under the surface. It was interesting to see the zodiacs from a bird's eye view.

written by

shoshtrvls on March 8, 1992 from Antarctic Peninsula, Argentina

from the travel blog: Antarctica and South America (1992)

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