Date: 14th Jan, 2011
It was quite sad to leave the Antarctic peninsula behind as our ship made its way towards south shetland islands. The plan was to land at two islands before proceeding back to Ushuaia. The first one was supposed to see the chinstrap penguins which we haven't had a chance to see a lot of them during this trip. The second one was at Yankee harbor which is an Argentinian base station that is also home to many seals and penguins. Sadly we had to face force-9 winds that made landing almost impossible. The ship did circle around to seek other wind protected islands but with no great luck. An unfortunate decision was made to abandon our plans and head north towards Ushuaia. It was very important to reach Ushuaia on time because many of the co-passengers had a flight out of Ushuaia on the same day we land there. The wind was so strong that the ship had to literally crawl through the passage at 0.5-0.7knots/hr between south shetland islands.
On our way back to Ushuaia we have to pass through the Drake passage. This passage is famous for high winds that cause gigantic waves where the pacific and atlantic oceans meet. It is also called the "sea-sickness passage". Knowing that we will hit the dreaded Drake passage later in the day when we set sail in the open waters leaving behind the south shetland islands, we ended up applying the anti-sickness patch and popping a dromamine pill. There was a screening of the movie "slumdog millionaire" in the presentation room and having watched that movie 3 times already, we decided to take a nap instead.
In the evening, we were invited to an after-dinner beach theme party in the bar. According to the staff this made sense because we are heading north which is way warmer than the south and the beach party was relevant to welcome this change after 15 days in the southern oceans. They were quite creative in coming up with beach costumes. It was good fun enjoying some beach music played by one of the co-passengers (Larry who was called DJ Weddell for this event) who had a good collection of music readily available based on his long experience in the music records label industry. We danced a little bit while sipping on some Amaretto sours. Ofcourse the life of the party were the members of the expedition team who put great effort in dressing themselves in creative beach costumes.
The sunset was absolutely gorgeous which we could conveniently enjoy right from our cabin window.
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