A continent of superlatives

We’ve already encountered amazing wildlife – and that’s just the people on the ship. Poseidon god of the sea watched over us with a gentle crossing of some of the angriest waters on earth: the Drake Passage was truly the Drake Lake. If nausea doesn’t hit you (and I’ve been totally spared – eating lots of ginger) then the roll of ship can be enjoyable, sort of like a carnival funhouse. The albatrosses that follow us remind me of Colerige and also that line about some birds fly to live and others live to fly. Albatrosses definitely live to fly – or live to glide, as the case may be, since they are forever swooping wingtip to sea and catching updrafts off of the waves. Today (Monday) the first strong hints we are through the Drake and getting close to the continent: a magnicent pod of fin whales first off starboard then blowing and moving to sport off port. An hour later our first iceberg, a towering custard concoction, Buick-blue with hints of pinks and shroud-white where parts of the ice had calved off. The captain stopped the ship and then maneurvered carefully around it at about 100 meters. Ghostly, poking upward and disappearing into the low-ceilinged clouds, a Flying Dutchman of a berg. John from Akzo Nobel says this a contintent of superlatives and firsts, well, that was our first Antarctic iceberg, and I’ll hold it in my memory.