Friday, December 16th

This morning, the alarm sounds off at 2:45am. We have thirty minutes before our ride comes. We hustle with the excitement of a trip to Antarctica, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands. At the airport, we are greeted by long lines, but it turns out they will not impact us as we have somehow managed to bring only carry on …

Thankfully, we have good traveling weather. We're happy to postpone the rough seas for as long as possible. We wake at 7:00am to a very bright room. I guess that is the danger of leaving the balcony drapes open. At breakfast, we are again impressed with the food selections. We sampled mini-waffles, pancakes, fresh fruit, cheese and smoked …

This morning we didn't hear our alarm. Instead, we wake up to a shrill voice over the loud-speaker: ''The lecture will start in twenty minutes.'' We jump out of bed, quickly dress, and run to grab food. We enter the theatre, missing only the first five minutes of the lecture. A French woman named Marie-Paule lives in Grave Cove and talks about her …

I sleep until 8:45am and wake up feeling refreshed. We have our breakfast and perform the mandatory gear cleaning in preparation for our stops in South Georgia. There is a lecture on king penguins and one on sea birds. I enjoy learning more about the animals we will be seeing. Around 7:00pm, we eat appetizers in the lounge and meet more of our …

Having gone to bed late, we do not wake until 9:15am. We relax a bit before the lecture ''Marine Mammals'' begins. Then for our lunch they serve a fixed-course Christmas meal with sweet potato soup, salmon, and a special yule log for dessert.

In the afternoon, we attend a lecture on the elephant seal. Then the expedition leader tells us about …

We wake up while the ship is still a few hours away from South Georgia. Fortunately, the animals of South Georgia came to greet our boat. We see fur seals porpoising as we continued on our way. We eat breakfast on deck two while seal spotting out the window.

We depart by zodiac for our five-hour hike, braving steep rocky steps, snow-covered …

This next stop is St. Andrew's Bay where 200,000 king penguin pairs and their chicks are filling the bay with their joyful cries.

We wake up early to have breakfast before our 7:30am zodiac ride to Gold Harbour. Gold Harbour takes its name from the pyrite or ''fools gold'' found here in 1911. We wonder whether we will see any on shore, as we enjoy the view of the glacier in the distance and king penguins swimming nearby the boat.

On shore, we are greeted by elephant seals …

Today we are at sea, so we spend most of the day enjoying lectures and reviewing our photographs from South Georgia. There is a lecture called ''Ice is Nice'' and another lecture introducing us to Antarctica. We have dinner with naturalists and ask many questions about the animals and their habits. Our biggest question is if the Drake Passage will …