Antarctica Trip Day 7: Anvord Bay in the zodiacs.

While we were sitting in the dining room, eating our lunch, someone got wildly excited and started telling and pointing out of the window.

We all saw a whale breach just enough to blow a spout and then twice show its tail as it dived. Very exciting. It’s probably lucky the shop has stabilisers because fully 100% of the passengers all ran to our side of the ship to catch a glimpse.

This post is pretty much icebergs.

We saw a seal but my photos of it were pretty bad. The photo at the top of the post was taken by someone else.

In the afternoon we were going to have another landing but there was too much ice in the opening of the bay, so instead, both groups were taken out on the zodiacs to cruise around.

We were sailing around, looking for whales and seals but there weren’t a lot to be found, except that one seal I’ve already mentioned.

But no one cared.

It was simply enough to be here and to experience the beauty that was all around us.

At one stage we passed by a huge chunk of black ice. This is ice that is perfectly clear because it has spent thousands of years being slowly compressed until every skerrick of air is gone. Rose, our guide, got one of the men to fish it out so she could take it to the dining room.

I took this video to try and show you what it sounds like as the zodiac moves over and through the ice. It’s a cracking, crunching sound. At the end, you can hear the conversation the guys in the boat were having about using the black ice.

My absolute favourite out of all the ice is the blue ice. It’s simply stunning. I’ve taken hundreds of photos to try to show you just how beautiful it is. 

Some of the icebergs have weird and wonderful designs on them. This is because at some stage they’ve flipped right over, so we’re seeing what used to be the underside, which has been sculpted by the water.

All too soon it was time to go back. Ridiculous! We’d only been out for 3 hours or so!

In the next photo, please have a good look at the rectangular iceberg in the middle and a little to the left of the shot. It stars in the next little story…

As we were putt-putting towards the ship, all of a sudden there was a huge CRACK. As our heads swiveled to the left, a huge chunk of ice slid off the back of a rectangular iceberg and crashed into the sea.

There’s no photo of the actual event, sorry. It all happened so quickly. Morgan’s zodiac had passed a lot closer to it and they noticed a huge crack running up the side of it. They wondered if they should hang around just in case it calved, but of course you never know exactly when these things are going to happen.

But what an amazing thing to see! I’d say that it was one more tick off my list of things to see, but I didn’t even consider that something like this would happen just as we were going past.

We met for dinner and spent the evening together almost dazed at what we’d seen that day. From the very first moment we were out of the ship until the end of the day when we came back after cruising around the bay, the day was something magical.

I know that behind the scenes there’s a lot of work that goes on by the crew to ensure that we tourists have a wonderful experience. But all of their work, combined with the utterly perfect weather, made this a day to remember.