From Ushuaia we flew via Buenos Aires to Lima, Peru. We had an Airbnb apartment in one of the sea side areas of Lima called Miraflores. A family reunion was planned with our eldest son coming in from his home in Berlin. Lima generally and Miraflores in particular is a pleasant place to spend some time in the early part of the year, particularly if your home is in the Pacific NW. Lima has a yearly temperature range of 60°F to 80°F, and an annual average rainfall of 16mm (0.67 imches). So it is warm without being hot and forget rain. We have visited a number of times in recent years.

Looking back on our previous post I am more than a little surprised by the low key tone of my description of our collision. Maybe it was the fact that it was a reef and not an Iceberg that kept our reactions muted, who knows. But in any case as time passed Nina began to focus on the question of "How could this brand new, purpose-built, ice-class, polar expedition ship hit a submerged rock?" We never did get an answer to that question, but we did arrive back in port a day earlier than planned and got an unexpected bus tour of what the locals call the National Park.

This morning we made a landing on Elephant Point, which is a small outcropping on Livingston Island, which in turn is part of the South Shetland group of Islands. The point was once a camping and hunting location back in the days of the seal oil trade. Today there is only some remains of an old sealers hut. There is almost no snow on this piece of land so that animals are more prevelant. In the photos below you will see a number of groups of male Elephant Seals which from time to time get involved in pushing matches to test their strength, an interesting demonstration of the way these guys fight. There are also some large colonies of Gentoo penguins many of them nursing young.

Christmas day offered no rest from the excitement of cruising amongst the ice and animals in our trusty little Zodiacs. This time the location was Foyn Harbor, Enterprise Island which in addition to providing a great display of ice and animals is the last home of the Norwegian Whale Factory ship the Governoren which caught fire after spending an entire summer harvesting whale oil. In response to the fire the Captain ran the burning ship aground thereby saving all of the 85 crew but loosing the entire summers harvest.

This morning we made a landing at Neko Harbor a small beach in Andvord Bay on the west side of the Antarctic Continent. The harbor is named after a Scottish Whaling ship which operated in the area between 1911 and 1924. We landed on the small beach south of a huge glacier, observed the Gentoo penguin colonies that occupy the small number of rock out croppings, and walked up a large snow slope on the southern side of the harbor. For the more adventurous of the guests this snow slope offered the opportinty to do a bit of bum-sliding down the steep face of the snow ridge. Nina, my guardian angle reminded me that this activity was probably not for me as I am still only 6 weeks into recovery from neck surgery.