Monday 3rd February Last Day of our Antarctic Adventure

We decided to have a little sleep in this morning before heading down to breakfast with Geoff and Millie around 8.30am We enjoyed our breakfast before going to the Observation lounge for a very interesting talk about Penguins in Antarctica, this was followed by another presentation about the first “over-wintering” group in Antarctica. A group of men led by Adrien de Gerlache were stuck in their ship by ice and unable to get out and so spent a Winter down in Antarctica until the following Summer when they cut the way out for the ship. This happened around 1898-9, I think. It was a fascinating history talk and one I will do more research on when we arrive home. One of the men on board this ship, the Belica was a young Roald Amundsen who, later was the first person to reach the South Pole. We enjoyed a delicious lunch and then returned to the lounge for another interesting talk about super-heroes of the Southern Ocean, krill and why they are so important for the ocean life. Our presenter, Anya is a passionate marine biologist from Russia, and she has done many presentations on this trip. They have all been extremely interesting, informative and entertaining, really aimed at the correct level for guests. We joined with other guests for an Antarctic Trivia afternoon and the four of us finished mid-field. In the early evening, we said a formal farewell to the expedition team and were then shown beautiful photos and a wonderful video of our trip, taken by the expedition photographer. We will receive a copy of these and I’m sure they will be much better than any we took. We docked in Ushuaia just before 7pm. Some of the guests chose to disembark and go into town but we opted to stay on board. The make-up of the 150 guests has been interesting. By far the biggest groups would be the Chinese and Russians. Next, I think would be the 30 or so Australians, followed by the UK, USA and then small numbers from places like Brazil, Vietnam etc.