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...

The loud speaker "ding donged" into life. This is the captain speaking "Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship!" Chilling to the bone announcement, but luckily this was only our (very serious) lifeboat drill exercise where we had to go to our cabins, put on our warmest clothes, don our life jackets found under our beds and present ourselves in our allocated station for boarding our life boat. Good procedure to know! Around three years ago a similar boat sank ...

Overnight we had travelled quite a distance and now the sea was littered with stunning icebergs, some stationary and others bopping around in the crystal clear water. We also awoke to brilliant sunshine which made everything look so perfect. The snow became a more vivid white and the ice a more vivid blue and water was still enough to reflect back perfect mirror images of icebergs and snow clad mountains. We had been briefed that there was a rather strenuous clim...

Ushuaia is going to remind me of beautiful music. Our hostel plays dreamy relaxing music, the restaurants play good music and Argentinians have no problem singing along to the good music being played in the supermarket while they are shopping. This lively and lovely little place is literally the end of the road. The national park slightly south has the southernmost road on earth and a sign that is well photographed by intrepid travellers who go the whole length o...