Travel pictures
Antarctica is probably my favourite continent. It is wilder and more remote than anything else. It is the coldest and the highest continent, measured in altitude. But you get addicted to the great white. The pictures below are from my third visit, taking place over new Year 2023 / 2024. For Mette, this was the first visit, for me it was the second visit including landings. We ventured from Ushuaia aboard the good ship Seabourn Pursuit. Due to favourable weather conditions in the Drake passage, notoriously the roughest waters in the world, we landed in Antarctica one day early and got a total of 6 days with landings and Zodiac tours. Even though I had visited the continent twice before, I saw almost entirely new places. The first day we landed on Half Moon island with a giant colony of chinstrap penguins. On the last day of 2023 we cruised around Devil Island, next to James Ross island, and saw spectacular ice formations and abundant wildlife. After a splendid New Year's dinner and party, early on the first day of 2024 we landed at Brown Bluff. The sky was blue, the sea like a mirror, and we walked among thousands of gentoo penguins, many of them nesting. The scenery was astonishing, and it is hard to imagine a better start of the new year. Later that day we sailed around and Hope Bay, overlooking an Argentinian base and a leopard seal resting on an ice flake with penguins running merrily around the predator. On the 4th day we sailed among spectacular rock and ice formations at Spert Island, before continuing to Mikkelsen Harbour with more gentoo penguins and whales blowing at a distance in the sound beneath us. Next day we landed at Neko Harbour, walking among more penguin colonies and overlooking a spectacular glacier wall. In the afternoon at Paradise Harbour we saw numerous humpback whales swimming and blowing in the relatively shallow and protected waters. The last day brought us to Pleneau Island and Port Charcot, popularly called the Iceberg Graveyard. It was not hard to tell why with the most fabulous ice formations. The weather lived up to all expectations about Antarctica with the wind and snow howling around us. It was now time to return through the Drake Passage. Another smooth trip including the famous Seaborn caviar event in the good company with our fellow sailors, before passing by Tierre del Fuego and arriving back in Ushuaia, southernmost city in the world.
