We arrived just off Elephant island and anchored near Point Wild around 0700am. This was where Shackleton's men were left awaiting rescue, under the command of Frank Wild, while he headed to South Georgia to raise the alarm. Shackleton left on 24th April and returned on the 30th August 1916 with a Chilean tug boat captained by Luis Pardo, for whom there is a commemorative bust erected on the point, guarded by numerous chinstrap penguins. All 22 men were rescued - it's amazing they survived as the piece of land is relatively tiny albeit the nearby glacier was able to supply the fresh water and their upturned boats provided shelter. They also hunted for seals and penguins whose numbers would not be vast in the winter. Somehow Wild kept their spirits up and is now immortalized through the name of the Point.
We disembarked at 0730 on the first zodiac cruise and it was truly lovely watching the chinstrap penguins negotiating high rocky cliffs to get to and from the sea, porpoising and almost flying over the surface of the water and then observing their decision making process regarding whether to get in the water or not - sometimes they had no choice as they skidded on the algae and slipped straight in - whoosh! We also had a special encounter with a leopard seal who was just as curious about us as we were of him ( today's photo). Finally we took in the magnificence of the glacier and some of the surrounding icebergs. We watched the cape petrels nesting high on the cliffs and spotted a giant petrel consuming a dead red jelly fish. All in all brilliant.
Back on board I went to the gym - I could see whale blows in the distance and several different icebergs - the view made the exercise routine easy!
When we finally set off for for the Antarctic peninsula we did so via what was now a whale soup of humpbacks and fin whales who were joined by penguins and petrels in a feeding frenzy of some aquatic delicacy - we got great views.
Eventually we were underway and I warmed up over lunch - my hands even with gloves got very cold in the wind caused by the moving ship.
The afternoons lectures were on Antarctica and Whales both of which I watched in the room - the first one because after lunch I might snooze and it's not easy to fall asleep without embarrassing yourself in the lecture theatre and the later one because I also wanted to write my blog - so it was just easier and you don't really miss any of the content watching it on the television just the human contact.
Tomorrow will see us set foot for the first time on the continent of Antarctica - yippee.