Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Finally the end of Antarctica

I am finally finishing my Antarctica trip. I am not going into much detail about the remaining places I saw, but I am just posting some of my favorite sites and pictures from the trip. This honestly is in my top 5 of places to visit. This trip has been a life changing trip for me. I am so thankful that I was able to see this beautiful part of the world. So, here are a few of my many pictures that I took.

We went to the Polish station and it was amazing. On the beach in front of us were 23 huge (longer than me) sea elephants. They just laid there the entire day while we were walking around. They would make loud snorting noises and every now and then shift positions but mainly they just hung out. I really enjoyed this stop.



We saw so many whale bones littered all throughout Antarctica. This is part of the Polish station.

We made a bunch more stops but here was another stop that I really loved. This used to be the base for Argentina. Now some people are here, but it is mainly the penguins who live here.

We climbed up this huge hill and then proceeded to slide down on our bum. It was very fast and fun. The worst part was when you would suddenly hit a jump, then land hard and keep going. I loved it!!!


Here are a few more pictures of penguins. I love penguins. It was such an experience I will never foget sitting among hundreds of penguins. They would waddle right by you. They are such beautiful animals.



Here is a cute little Adelie penguin.

Here are just some of my favorite scenery shots that I haven't posted yet. We saw hundreds of glaciers and thousands of iceburgs. I also have thousands of amazing pictures that were hard to pick but here are some of my favs!


Beautiful... Gorgeous... Wish you were here!!!!! Oh and no I didn't tint the pictures. The more blue in the iceburg the more compact it is.

A big shock for me were all of the many peaks, mountains and volcanoes that I saw in Antarctica it just isn't white!

Isn't this beautiful?! This is a huge tabular iceburg. They can sometimes be even longer than a mile. We saw quite a few of these. They are huge! They don't come from glaciers and they are long and flat. I loved these iceburgs!

Believe it or not but this picture was taken at about 11:30pm. The sun never completely set at night. It was very eerie and beautiful to walk out on deck in the middle of the night. It can actually be brighter but it had been snowing.

Well this is our final rough day at sea. This is the Cape Horn. We were about to get off the ship here but about 20 minutes before we began to unload a huge storm came up. I was just glad I wasn't on shore when the storm came and got stuck there. This was very beautiful with the waves and there were dozens of albatross birds flying in between the waves. It was an honor to sail around this area with a storm as more sailors have died here than any other place in the world. But I was also incredibly sad to leave. I will never forget the amazing sights I have seen.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I can see why you loved it there. The landscape is so interesting and beautiful. It evokes an "otherworldly" feeling. I like the part about going out on deck in the middle of the night and having that interesting lighting.

absolutely beautiful pictures!

love you,
B

Jaden said...

what an awesome experience!!!! :)