Blog this!

Last evening Kirsten, (the Expedition leader) challenged someone to do the weather for today. If it was good, drinks, glory and applauses, if not, probably we would suffer a lot! As you all may have already figured it out, someone immediately said "The Portuguese guys! They have the blogger!" Come on!!! It's true that weather forecast in Antarctica it's already hard, so imagine the difficulty in really changing it! It was a hard mission to achieve, but we were ready for it! When we woke up, there had already been a significant improvement on the weather, but it was still not perfect! (No hours were specified - the Portuguese were still working on it!) The morning was reserved for Zodiac landings (two main groups) in Port Lockroy, a former British Antarctic Survey base (now a museum and post office) and Jougla Point (penguins and a blue eyed shags colony)! Can you imagine-sending a postcard to the ones you care from Antarctica and at the same time help on the conservation of Antarctic heritage? That's what we did.

It's true that we'll arrive sooner than the postcards, but it was nice anyway! I've met the four nice girls working on that base, which shared with me a bit of their stories and told me how did they ended up with one of the most southern jobs of the world! They also maintain a regular blog from the base that can be checked out on the BAS (British Antarctic Survey) official web site.

A truly touching moment in that base was reserved for one of the passengers. My dear friend Kate, whose father was a former Antarctic explorer, was checking the museum when suddenly she saw a picture of her father right on the wall together with a group of other explorers. I felt really happy for her, and in a way, I felt more connected with the story of that place. It was an amazing!

Scheduled for the afternoon was the zodiac cruise on Paradise bay which started a bit delayed due to some technical problems on the ship's crane. So what was the weather like at this moment? My dear readers! Sunshine, blue sky and a flat sea - yeahhh! We were ready for cruising!! Our zodiac group was quite fun, and the driver, Andy, was ready to show us cool glacier walls and massive icebergs! We started with an amazing iceberg, and Andy looked at me and said. "Hey Luis, blog this now!" We're all laughing when a leopard seal was sighted resting on top of a small iceberg. What an image, what a powerful animal. We were 5 meters away, and there she was staring at us! We kept on going towards to this huge glacier wall and 5 minutes after, I was looking right when everybody was looking left and I saw them. I started hitting my friend Marco on the arm in a compulsive way."Look to the right nowwwww!"

There were minke whales, 6 meters away from us. My God - Andy immediately turned off the Zodiac engine and they started literally going around us. They were 2 to 3 meters close to the small boat, checking us around, appearing and disappearing beneath the boat. Adrenalin was high, we had 3 amazing big whales really next to us, and we could hear them breathing. A mix of excitement and happiness touched that Zodiac.

Sunny weather, amazing glaciers, icebergs, leopard seals and whales. We had to celebrate by drinking a beer on the upper deck just looking out to this unbelievable bay! The day was not over. After dinner, a multiple question and answer quiz was set up in the bar! Damien and Kirsten were the hosts and it was pure fun! We had teams cheating right on the first questions. Mikolaj controlling the entrances on the door and some of the questions were sooo funny! What a nice idea. Guess who won the competition? The Jalapenos - (Portuguese/Mexican colligation)! Tomorrow will be our last day close to inland Antarctica, and fortunately it's not up to us to set up the weather again!