Our last day in Antarctica has been an icy day. Even the
temperature has been around 0 degree Celsius; just the right temperature for
snow. Millions and billions of ice crystals were falling out of huge grey
clouds; clumping together to a bigger construction which we call snowflakes.
The ship was covered with a nice white blanket of snow and we could hear, here
and there the question: “should we build a snowman?” But we had no time, we had
to keep track of the landscape covered with amazing glaciers, watch the sea,
covered with icebergs and the rest of the sea ice from the last winter.
It is
unbelievable that each glacier, each floating ice sheet started its “life” out
of little tiny ice crystals. You get crazy when you start to think about all
these structures. And did you know at home that there are not two ice crystals on
earth which look the same on earth? Even though all ice crystals have a
hexagonal structure; they are so different like our fingerprints are not the
same.
As there was so much ice in at the sea we were not able to
land at the Argentinian station Base Brown. However, our expedition leader Anja
changed the program directly and we started a wonderful and impressive
PolarCircel boat cruise for everybody. It is unbelievable how different the icy
landscape looks with the view from our little boats. To see everything just
from the sea level gives us such a different imagination of this icy landscape.
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In the afternoon we reached Neko Harbour. Here we got the
possibility to step our feet on the Antarctic mainland. Hundreds of Gentoo
Penguins greeted us. It is still the mating time. As everything is more or less
still covered with snow the penguins had no possibility to build their nest
made out of little pebbles until now. We started our landing in the snow, but
later on the sun came through and everything glittered so nicely as if the
scenery would be covered with millions of diamonds.
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Some passengers made the decision to go kayaking in front of
these amazing glaciers. They got a marvelous impression and nature feeling they
will never ever forget.
Other passengers took the opportunity to go on a 90 minute
PolarCircelBoat cruise. One of the highlights on the cruise was being able to
watch a huge Leopard Seal, resting on an ice sheet.
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On what was our last day in this wonderful part of our
earth, Antarctica could not say “Good Bye” in a better way.
