Day 16 MS Roald amundsen

Woke early ( as advised) and found ourselves blanketed in snow.

The early start is we are hoping to enter a strait called the “gullet” not always passable because of amount of icebergs. 

We are lucky and we’re able to go through, beautiful.

We were also advised that at about 1.30am we crossed the Antarctic circle. 

We only had one lecture ( conference ) lecture this morning which was cancelled. 

And our landing isn’t until this after noon.

 Approx 2pm we will make a landing at red rock ridge. This is actual Antarctic mainland.

This leaves us with a day of actually just chilling. 

We gym✔️

We headed  to deck 10 for a jacuzzi ( as one does)

Spent the next few hours just marvelling at the iceberg structures passing us and the mountains and the seals and the birds and a few little minke whales.

I really have no words

We do arrive and the expedition crew head of to make sure everything safe but return to say it’s not safe enough, weather has turned a bit cold and windy, and for an open landing the sea is just too rough for safe landings. 

We are taken a further hour away and in that journey entertained by a pod of orcas. Photos will not do them justice , so we just watched.

The research crew from the boat also took off to do some tagging and sampling of the orcas.

Fantastic to watch.

Finally arriving in stoneleigh island.

Another abandoned base with both British and American lodgings. 

As you will see in photos we are sitting in a sea of ice and the whole view is just breathtaking. 

There are many large ice floes and nearly everyone has at least one, mostly more Crabeater seals.

We land on shore and spend about an hour exploring the old buildings and resident fur seals before returning to ship. 

The lucky first group Of kayakers, after two disappointing cancelations, make onto the sea. Looked fantastic, however we were told the large amount of ice made it difficult. 

Beautiful sunset!