This morning the camping crew were back bright and early,
okay maybe not so bright… and we cheered them back into the ship. They
immediately dashed for the loo (anything to avoid using the Yum Yum bucket on
shore) and completely devoured the breakfast buffet.
After the huge success of walking through the penguin
colonies, today, we visit Gerlache Straights.
This is one of the many locations where whales are feeding on Krill at
this time of year and it’s not uncommon to spot them.
From the deck of the ship we could see many whales and also
the scientific expedition who were trying to tag 70 of them. Camera shots were
being fired like crazy…for all 97 of us, we had never seen so many whales just
moving slowly right past the ship. One even just swam right under our ship.
After our regular, breakfast, briefing, re-sterilising and
kitting up, we left on the Zodiac RIBs for a whale spotting expedition. All everybody wanted to do is get a little
closer to them and what happened today, had never happened to this crew before as close and as long according to
the guides and the expedition company.
After about 20 minutes, we spotted a few
Humpback whales at the surface resting but one started heading for us. Now, we
had only films like Jaws and Moby Dick as a point of reference and we were all
starting to quietly panic.
In no time, this 10 ton humpback whale was playing with us,
checking us out and generally showing off by rolling over and swimming upside
down, blowing by our boat, coming up and looking directly at us. For nearly 10 minutes we had what the experts
had said was extremely rare and for all of us, a mix of complete fear and total
amazement. Gliding majestically under our boats, clearing them by only inches
and coming up so close you could touch him or her, it was the pinnacle moment
for us as it was for our guide and RIB driver who also had never seen this
before. There had been more than one
reference to brown underwear.
Quickly, by radio, the other RIBs were called and in no
time, 6 RIBs were almost together and all experiencing the thrill of a
lifetime.
We then realised that we were being treated to some great
luck and despite the extreme cold temperature on the ice sea, nobody but nobody
was allowing the RIB to go back to the ship.
For Live Action - Check out the Video below !!
We have travelled a fair bit as had many of the fellow
travellers, but we all agreed that this moment was the most breath-taking we
had ever seen and few us believed that it would ever be surpassed. Like everything in this continent, there are
no easy ways to describe it, photograph or forget it.
This rare amazing event was summed up in the announcement
for lunch by the head man, Boris, which went something like “Good afternoon ladies
and gentleman, its one o’clock and lunch is served…..What the hell just
happened out there?..” Sometime later,
the whale experts said that event was rare and they had never known it to
happen for as long as that, so we know we had been blessed with great luck.
They think it was probably a young adult whale who was just curious.
There was a little shore landing in the afternoon for more
penguins, but we, like many, were still reeling from this morning and declined
to go out again today. Many people
struggled to avoid a sleep after the long adrenalin rush of the morning….a
phenomenon we had not seen before and even Janette who never sleeps in the day,
crashed out in the afternoon. Steve, now
officially an old person also fell asleep.
Check
out the Whale Action video – you’ll see some pretty amazing stuff !!
