The GCW Tour, Buenos Aires & Antarctica: The First Full Day at Sea

Our first full day at sea included a sighting of our first (and second and third and then I stopped paying attention) iceberg. Here it is...

But beyond scanning the horizon for icebergs, there were also a few mandatory and voluntary training sessions. The mandatory session was focused on the procedures for going ashore, a complicated process under the best of circumstances. With the rules needed to protect the passengers and the wilderness, it gets a bit nuts. Most interesting to me was that they actually limit the number of passengers who can go ashore at any one time. Thus, everything's done in shifts. (They made what I expect is a very valid point about not getting ready too soon to go ashore lest you have problems with overheating while sitting on the nice warm boat in all your thermal gear.)

We'll see how it goes on Saturday morning when we reach our first official landing site.

The voluntary session I went to was on seabirds. It was presented by a former Canadian wildlife researcher, and was pretty informative. Well, it was until I left the session at which point I pretty much forgot everything he said except that everyone should make a point of seeing an albatross.

This is not an albatross, but it is the first seabird I saw after the session...