Mikkelsen Harbour

Our final day of excursions. Snow has fallen but skies are clearing. We are heading out to Mikkelsen Harbour. Could we be seeing more penguins?

Before we get to the harbor we see huge icebergs, some of them the size of small mountains. Grand is the only way you can describe them.

Later we come upon Gentoo penguins tumbling into the water and heading off to sea leaping up and down to reduce the chance of being eaten by a leopard seal or orca.

Even after these past days of remarkable views, today’s may be the most remarkable of all. We walk among the penguins enjoying their childlike behavior, see a frolicking leopard seal and gaze on the mountains and glaciers gliding along on our zodiacs, and a solitary penguin wandering his own private glacier. The videos and images tell the story.

Eventually it’s time to go and we bang back to the ship. I squint into the austral sun veiled behind high misty clouds. It looks like a giant moon and makes a ragged rainbow around a circle of shredded clouds below.

The sun in Antarctica is a different sun, an unworldly, ghostly, primeval sun. Winter is coming and now the sun seems to retreat as Earth’s southern tip dips and wobbles away. A sea of diamonds glint in the reflected light. I gaze at the icebergs and am overwhelmed. They are immense, immobile. They ask for nothing. Demand nothing. They simply rule, unaware perhaps that time will eventually reduce them to droplets in the sea.