Hearts racing we pulled off our clothes, handed Heather's camera to an English chap we had been talking to and ran across the tiny black volcanic pebbles and into the COLDEST, water you could EVER experience in a lifetime. Are we mad?! Probably! It seemed a good idea at the time. The water in the bay on Deception Island is (supposed to be!) slightly warmer, as there is a trickle of steamy water arriving to the ocean from a fresh water geothermal spring. It he...

Each evening a proposed days activities sheet is posted up on a board and we have a briefing meeting of what we should expect. Then quite often due to weather or landing conditions it all changes - this makes each day exciting!After Breakfast we are told to be ready by 9.00am for a landing on Danco Island. The whole gearing up process is much smoother now – we have it down to a fine art. Pull on the waterproof pants, pull on the boots and tuck the waterproo...

"Please come immediately to the expedition lounge, we have a surprise change of plans!" After not landing on Petermann Island (see previous story) we thought we were to have a quiet afternoon, however it is now 5pm and we are summonsed to a meeting. The change of plans is an exciting one. We are going to land at Port Lockroy where the Brits still have a base and nearby Jougla point. The old buildings here go back to an earlier era of WWII when a base was in opera...

Our third landing was very much anticipated by quite a few on board as this was to be on the mainland of Antarctica - the 7th (and final) continent for many. After our amazing BBQ I wrote about in our last story, it was hard to squeeze back into our wet weather gear again – hard to bend down for pulling on boots and arranging velcro and zippers with an overindulged stomach! Once dressed, off again we zipped in the zodiacs, through the iceberg strewn water ...

Crack, Bang, Scrape, Clang, Squeak….. these noises reverberate through the air as the MS Expedition makes her way slowly and gingerly through pack ice that parts unwillingly for her passage. We are sitting at lunch and John one of the expedition leaders is at our table and jumps up to look more closely out the window and says "Wow that is much more ice than we expected!"   He tells us he doubts we will get through this ice to our proposed landing spot of...