Finishing off day 9. It was our last day of landings, and now we were headed back across the Drake Passage again for South America.

That evening after dinner, Quark held a charity auction to raise money for Penguin Lifelines, a project that researches threats to penguins and how they are affected by things like climate change, fisheries, and pollution.

Ryan emceed the event, which was held in the main lounge where we’d had all our recaps. Every time you bid on an item, they would refill your champagne.

The items up for grabs included the Crossing the Circle flag from our celebration, a bottle of glacier water melted from a hunk of ice Jimmy picked up at one of our landings, and a bottle of Shackleton whisky, a replica of the whisky that the famous explorer took with him on his 1907 expedition to Antarctica.

The krill game had nothing to do with the auction; it was just one of the games available in the lounge and I thought it was funny.

By the way, the other night I had a dream that I passed a krill stand on the side of the road. Like a little fast-food shop. But they sold krill. Krill have invaded my dreams!

They also auctioned off the opportunity to do the wake-up call on one of our days on the Drake. Alex chose a song each morning that started the wake-up call, and then he made our daily announcements. The person who won this auction item would get to choose the music and make their own announcement.

We did not buy anything. I mainly wanted the Crossing the Circle flag, but it went for more than we were willing to pay. We bid up to $100 but it got over that pretty fast. (Ended up going for $500.)

And thus ended day 9.