Tuesday, January 3

Our first stop was Neko Harbour where we did a longer hike up to a great vantage point. We could see a penguin colony below us and a glacier at the far side of the bay. We kept hearing cracks and rumblings from the glacier, and even a few small pieces of ice calving into the bay. Then we hiked halfway back down and then slid down the rest of the way on our backs down the snowy side of the mountain.
              • Jacket Sledding
              • Penguin Art

              After lunch we went ashore at Port Lockroy, a restored research center which is home to lots of penguins (they moved in after the station was built). They have a museum set up, as well as a gift shop chock full of penguin merchandise. It was here that we got The Duke of Lockroy, an adorable little stuffed penguin, complete with a tartan scarf with the unique "Lockroy" pattern. Port Lockroy is also the southernmost post office in the world and we took advantage of this to send some postcards.
                  • Skua Style
                    • Walk like a penguin!
                    • We climbed these about 400 times

                        Towards the end of dinner we felt the ship vibrate and realized that we were pushing through pack ice. We ran to grab cameras and jackets, then headed up to the bow to watch. It was great fun, Randy hung the video camera out over the bow to capture some great footage of the ice being split by the ship.

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