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We began our voyage with two days of very rough sailing from Ushuaia south...
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As we left the plane that took us from Santiago to Ushuaia, we were...
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Our little 'National Geographic Endeavour' on the left is...
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We were on the bottom deck, and had an up close and personal view of...
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The first two days were so rough, with the Atlantic Ocean waters...
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When we did get on deck, the only life we saw were birds, mostly petrels and...
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And then, after two days, we began to see icebergs.
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And small islands mostly covered with ice and snow.
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Some unscheduled excitement happened early on our third day. Another...
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In the early morning light we could see the ship in distress.
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Our little rubber zodiacs transferred passengers from the orange lifeboats to...
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... a larger cruise ship that was in the area. Fortunately for all, since our...
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As we sailed away, our ship gave three blasts of the horn in tribute to the...
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It was snowing heavily as we made our first landing, after...
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Cruising through the Lemaire Channel, the most narrow and scenic...
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Another view as we proceeded through the channel with spectacular...
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More icebergs.
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You can see this zodiac in better weather. Basically it's a rubber...
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A good insurance policy: we checked out, and back in, every time we left our...
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Stefan was one of our hardy boat handlers.
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Headed to shore. The sun was out, but the winds were whipping.
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Approaching an island in the South Shetland group. Every landing was a wet...
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Sometimes we needed a bit of help climbing ashore, between the heavy...
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And then we saw the penguins, one of the main attractions of any trip to the...
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Mostly we saw gentoo penguins.
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Many, many Adelies.
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We also saw a great many leopard seals, usually sunning themselves and paying...
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At some stops we were able to go kayaking amid the incredibly...
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It's difficult to describe the experience of gliding along amid all this...
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There's our ship in the background. We'd be here for two or...
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These icebergs come in all shapes and sizes. And varying shades of blue.
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No big floor shows on our ship, but we did have some entertainment in...
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Occasionally we see killer whales swimming by, or in this case coming...
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Another species of penguin, aptly called a chinstrap.
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Two Adelie penguins .
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More colorful pieces of ice.
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Off the ship, across the bay, out of the panga and up the hill. We...
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One of my favorite photos. It somehow reminds me of Custer's Last Stand....
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This is Port Lockroy. The British established a research station here...
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The kitchen as the researchers would have used it sixty years ago. Note the...
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Life wasn't easy here in the 1940's.
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Another favorite photo. Do you realize how hard it is to train wild...
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We didn't see any emperor penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula....
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"Go find your own girl friend!"
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Penguins, penguins, penguins.
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Another sleeping seal.
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Looks like he'd just had his lunch.
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Speaking of lunch, we didn't eat too badly ourselves.
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Our dining room.
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A nice quiet bay, so they're taking a load of kayaks out for our enjoyment.
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Loading up a zodiac.
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Off to shore and another visit with the penguins.
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And here come three of them now.
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At Enterprise Island, a zodiac ride or climb into a kayak, or both......
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They chose to kayak.
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Approaching the wreckage of an old whaling ship.
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Almost 100 years ago, in 1916, the whalers were celebrating the end of a very...
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The crew lost their ship and an entire whaling season, but at least...
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On the final day in Antarctica, we visited some elephant seals.
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A big male with a very big proboscis.
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Lots of elephant seals sleeping in the sun.
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A female seal waddling ashore.
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That beautiful nose proves she's a female.
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Headed back to our mother ship.
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Two final days of sailing rough seas as we crossed the Drake Passage , we...
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Some final pictures.
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Just one more.
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The 2,000 passenger Celebrity Infinity towers over our little National...
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This made a pretty good Christmas card for 2007 !
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