Antarctica- Part 3 Cuverville and Neko Harbour

Aren't these penguins so cute!!! These are gentoo penguins. Most of the penguins we saw had babies that were about 1 month old. They were so cute. The first thing I noticed when we landed at Cuverville Island was that it really smelled. Penguins do not smell that good. But then I noticed how cute they were and I got over it!
If you want to get a good look at any of these pictures click on them to make them bigger.

Here is me with my family just after we landed. Notice all the penguins behind us.

Here are some more penguins. We saw hundreds if not thousands of penguins while we were in Antarctica. The penguins would all live in one area.

Isn't this sweet? These babies were born late. They were only about 2 weeks old. Unfortunately this means they probably won't make it during the winter. The mom was keeping them warm as the dad was building the nest. Notice him setting the little rock around the mother. Most of the mother penguins were cuddling or feeding the babies as the penguin fathers were building the nests. It was fascinating to watch this out in the open.

We left Cuverville Island and headed over to Neko Harbour. We were excited to reach Neko Harbour because we were finally making a stop on the mainland of Antarctica instead of just the islands.

When we arrived at Neko Harbour my family and I decided to hike through the snow up to the top of this hill to get a good view. This is where we were climbing to. We had to be very careful hiking and not leave the trail as the ice and snow could always cave in and someone could fall quite a ways down.

Here we are climbing.

Here we are at the top. Isn't it beautiful? It was definetly worth the hike!

While we were up there we next to a huge glacier. We were able to see lots of calving (when the snow drops). It would begin by a loud bang noise and then you would see the snow drop down. This one was cascading like a waterfall.

The next two pictures are one of my favorites. I had just climbed down the mountain and had my camera ready as I was looking at the glacier when this huge chunk fell into the sea.

This is the splash the glacier left.

This is a very typical site we saw on most of our landings. The beach was always covered with ice. Some small pieces like these and others were huge- bigger than me.

Here is a gentoo penguin feeding her babies.

The penguins love to swim. They loved to jump in to the water. They would also swim alongside the boat with you. They would jump in and out of the water wherever we went. I loved watching how playful they were.

The next couple of pictures are just of the scenery as we were in our little boat going back to our ship.

I know it is ridculous the amount of pictures I am posting on my blog but believe it or not I took over 2,000 pictures on this trip. So, I can't help but post quite a few. The only thing I can say is that unfortunately the pictures do not do it justice!

I love the light blue that surrounded every iceburg we saw. Tomorrow I will post again and I will post more iceburgs and finally my pictures of the humpback whales and seals. For now I am going to get warm with hot cocoa and remember all the amazing things I was able to witness in Antarctica!