Neko Harbor & Danco Island, Antarctica
Neko Harbor is a beautiful glacier-rimmed bay on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Ashore this morning we hiked up a snow-packed slope and looked down on the face of the closest glacier. It is rare around here to have this perspective since so often we are at water level looking up. Its blue color and its immense size were impressive. The best way down the hill was in a sitting position - sliding, which many of us did. Some of us hiked up several times to enjoy it again and again. So simple an activity and yet so much fun!
In the bay we made use of the Zodiacs to get out for a look around. There were many icebergs to explore and beautiful lighting that changed every few minutes. This of course had us pulling our cameras back out again and again. When we turned around to go back to the National Geographic Explorer, the tiny ship in the distance finally put the sizes into a scale we could measure. Even our ship looked tiny!
In the afternoon we took to the water yet again in either kayaks or Zodiacs. Here the Gentoo penguins and Weddell seals were some of the stars of the show. We had the chance to see the gentoos in rafts of 100 to 200 birds taking their Sunday baths… or so it seemed. We know they look shiny and clean when they come out of the water and return to the nest, but we had no idea of what work went into it. We sat quietly and watched the rubbing, dunking and scrubbing (with flippers and beaks) that went on as groups of penguins floated, rolled and bathed all at once, on the water surface in a large group. Every now and then they would disappear en mass, only to appear again seconds later in the same place. Now we have had another fun glimpse into the daily life of penguins that is more memorable since we have seen it for ourselves.
During recap, seemingly as a reaction to Steve MacLean mentioning Minke whales, two humpback whales appeared beside the ship (and were spotted from the lounge). Keeping with the flexibility we have come to know and love, Lisa delayed dinner and asked the Captain to turn the ship around so that we could go get a longer look at these magnificent animals. Our extended cocktail hour provided hors d’oeuvres for the eyes – whale flukes (one mostly black and the other mostly white), tall blows and beautiful views. For the grand finale, one of the whales made an underwater bubblenet and then lunged through it from below, coming to the surface with an open mouth and extended throat pleats full of water and the fish or krill that it was feeding on tonight.
With that, we bid them farewell and went off to do our own feeding on an Argentinean buffet.
