Date: 9th, 10th, 11th Jan 2011
The next two days were "at sea" days and the first day was supposed to be fairly relaxed with no wake up calls. We had brunch at 10am instead of breakfast and lunch. We woke up feeling the waves of a rough sea in which our ship was navigating. Everybody seem to be performing a wave dance in the corridors due to all the bouncing while trying to make slow progress towards their destination. I had popped in a sea sickness pill the previous night which did not help greatly. It was time to apply a sea-sickness patch behind your ear which was supposed to strengthen the defense against sea sickness. Unfortunately the effect of a patch is supposed to kick-in only after 4-6hrs. These pills and patches are supposed to cause drowsiness and after brunch we slept like a log until 3pm. Meanwhile we had missed the screen of a documentary called "congress of penguins" and a talk by Damien on "Shackleton - the boss". We did manage to attend the talk by Pat on "penguins in peninsula".
In the evening, we decided to laze around in the lounge area of the ship sipping some rum cocktails and watching "Mama Mia" which Lisa picked up quickly after going through a big collection of DVDs. I had not watched the movie and enjoyed some funny parts here and there. It reminded us of bollywood movies with contextual songs/dance sprinkled all over it. We barely sat for dinner and I could feel the effect of sea sickness. Immediately returned back to the cabin and tried to get some rest after throwing up once. The ship doctor was very nice to come by our cabin and gave some advice on what to eat and how I can feel better soon. We managed to catch up a little bit on "Star Wars 5" before getting to bed.
The wake up call was at 7.30am and they had planned for a packed day full of talks. Pat talking about "shorebirds in antarctica", Jimmy about "seals in antarctica", Damien about "Swedish expedition" and Jamie about "ice". The sea was not very rough and we had a good breakfast during which we planned on attending 3 out of the 4 talks planned for the day. We found out later that there was a heavy storm on the straight-line path from S. Georgia to South Orkney islands and the captain decided to take the longer less bumpy route which added an extra day to reach our destination. Just to laugh a little bit before visiting the penguins in Antarctic peninsula, Duncan had planned to screen the movie "Happy Feet" which we missed due to the drowsy side-effect of the sea sickness pills.
On the 3rd "at sea" day, the sea got rougher again. We spent some time in the bridge, after lunch, trying to spot some whales but with no luck. We could sense the restlessness in everybody's faces since this was the longest we had gone so far with no land or wildlife in site except for some flying prions and albatrosses. By dinner time we sighted our first big ice berg with the orkney islands in the background. Almost all the passengers were on the bridge and nobody wanted to head to the dining room for dinner. The ice bergs were huge with interesting formations and amazing colors. The blue ones are the oldest and densest. As we approached the Orkneys islands we could spot some fin whales crossing across the front of the ship. The temperature had dropped terribly and it was quite a challenge to go on to the deck for taking some photos without proper windproof gear. It was almost the time for sunset and the sky colors were amazing with beautiful patterns. The conditions were not great for a landing on South Orkneys. The island was hardly visible. After cruising through the ice bergs we moved along to our next destination which would be the Antarctic peninsula. The sea continued to be rough and I applied the anti-sickness patch along with a pill to counter the menace of sea-sickness. We could see fewer people coming to the dining room and many skipping lunch/dinner due to motion sickness.
We had no problem sleeping through the rock-n-roll of the ship. We were looking forward for the next day when we will be reaching the frozen continent. We slept early thinking about those beautiful images of ice bergs and abundant wildlife which will entertain us soon.
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