Today is
the big day – and do we know that on board MS Fram! 14th December
2011 marks the centennial of Amundsen’s party reaching the South Pole, and they
travelled to Antarctica on board the famous vessel Fram, afterwhich our ship
is proudly named. And trying to follow the famous explorer’s steps, we
pursued our southward journey today.
First thing
in the morning, we sailed through the Lemaire Channel, which was hiding itself
with fog and rain, both of which luckily vanished by the time we came out the
southern end. And we were then greeted by a spectacular, truly Antarctic
scenery most befitting to today’s date: the sea in front of us was covered in
pack ice, and as we sailed on in our southerly journey, the buttery aspect of soft
ice –seawater just beginning to freeze– met us, and a bit later we came across
beautiful pancake ice –the next step in the formation of pack ice. On the ice
itself, we were very happy to see some resting seals, including Weddell,
crabeater and leopard seals. 
Captain Hårvig decided to make good use of our
solid, ice-class hull by carefully navigating through the ice floe labyrinth,
and making it to the southernmost point of our trip, just shy of Petermann
Island: 65° 11’ S, 64° 10’ W. Not quite the 90° S required to reach the South
Pole, but we are all very happy to be here today, and had the following picture
taken to celebrate the occasion and as a humble tribute to the great explorers
of years gone by.
Having left
the ice maze, we spent the best part of today taking our guests to have a
closer look at the ice, on board our maneuverable PolarCirkel boats. We also
spent the best part of the day trying to get a closer look at a group of orcas
that were spotted around the vessel at various times – and did not really succeed,
but looking for them between the floating ice, against the background of glaciers
cascading down the mountains all the way down to the calm seas was fabulous!
