This morning we visited Half Moon Island, home to a chinstrap colony. This island provided our first real chance to walk on ice even though there wasnt a lot around and what there was was covered in penguin guano! Judy (the poor lady who broke her foot on the very first landing) was able to be brought ashore, but unfortunately couldnt make the trek across the ice and scree to where the chinstraps were nesting.

I walked around there and was pleased to see a Weddell Seal on the beach on the way. It wasnt doing much but the seals have such cute faces they are a joy to see. When I reached the other side I marvelled at the how these little penguins make their way up such slopes! Once at the top I met up with Frank who pointed out "Mack the Knife". Mack is a Macaroni penguin who is slightly confused and lives with the Chinstraps. He even has a chinstrap mate although there is no hope of them ever producing anything (despite their frequent trying). It just goes to show though that its whats on the inside that counts!

A little further along I found myself a spot beside the chinstrap highway and settled in to watch the antics. I saw chinstraps mating (yep more penguin porn), some incubating eggs (unfortunately its too late in the season and these will never hatch), chicks begging for food, and some adults that despite having no mate were endeavouring to build their rock nests. It was fascinating to watch how particular these guys were at which rock to select. One decided that the rocks under my leg were by far the best in the region and kept returning much to my delight. I developed a soft spot for this little guy with a guano streak on his breast and had to restrain myself from intervening when another penguin stole half the rocks in his nest when he went down to the water to feed!

This afternoon we headed for Deception Island. Giles and I decided to come up with as many more fitting D titles as we could think of.. some of them were Desolate, Dismal, Dreary, Depressing... you get the picture. Its not so bad really but is definitely a change of pace from what we'd previously seen. Deception Island is in fact an active volcano and we sailed through "Neptunes Bellows" into the caldera itself. It was then into the zodiacs to get to shore. After the beautiful clear skies of this morning, it was a change to have "typical Deception Island weather" - cold, grey and raining. The landscape at Deception Island is pretty bleak. Grey volcanic soil/sand beaches surrounded by the stark edges of the caldera. The beach is littered with whalebones and other reminders of the past. The only wildlife we saw were two seals at the far end of the beach. The multi coloured parkas of the passengers as we all trooped up to Neptune's Window to check out the view. On a clear day you can sea the Antarctic Peninsula from there, but we werent in luck today. Instead we had a nice view of the sea and if you braved your vertigo enough to look over the edge there was a nice little beach down the other side.

I headed back towards the landing site to find a couple of people already going for their "polar plunge". These brave (or foolhardy) souls, stripped down to their swimmers and ran into the icy waters. Some then raced back to lay in the volcanic sand along the shoreline (it was actually hot about an inch down!), others just raced straight back to their towels and caught the first zodiac back to the sauna on board! Only about 15 went in but the rest of us cheered them on with much enthusiasm :)