It’s still day 8. We’ve done the polar plunge, showered, and had some dinner. And now here we were at Neko Harbour, which was located in the incredibly beautiful Andvord Bay.

We’re anchored and about to head out in the zodiacs for our first (and only) landing on the actual continent of Antarctica. All of our other landings were on islands, so this one is particularly exciting. Dinner was at 6 this evening, and then we started loading the zodiacs around 7:30. Here they were getting the kayaks ready for the kayakers.

White on white

The Quark team at the landing spot

The three of us on the continent

This site was home to about 250 pairs of breeding gentoo penguins.




The evening light was really beautiful.

Babies!


Penguin highways.

Glacier / molting.

On Neko Harbour we hiked up a ridge for an overlook of the whole bay.


You can tell it’s me by the arms.



Allen filming some video from the top of the ridge.





Chatting with Laurie. I have got to do a post soon about the Quark team themselves, because they were half of what made the trip so awesome.



I had to stop and wait for these penguins to cross paths on the penguin highway before I continued on.

We were losing light by the end. Sunset was at 9:21 this evening and this was taken around 9:50pm as we prepared to head back to the ship.

The next day would be our last two landings before we had to head back across the Drake. And they happened to be inside the caldera of a volcano.