In the morning of Day 4, on 9 February, following an afternoon’s steaming through the
Beagle Channel off Ushuaia, then two days crossing Drake Passage,
Sea Adventurer dropped anchor off
Half Moon Island in the
South Shetlands chain. We transferred to zodiacs and it felt great a few minutes later to set foot on solid ground. The light drizzle turned to snow as we alighted, dusting the rocks white and giving the scene a fairy-land character. The black and white views, and atmosphere, were spectacular, even otherwordly.
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After an hour or so on Half Moon we returned to Sea Adventurer and steamed further south in the Shetlands while enjoying another excellent lunch on board. We’re not easy to impress in the food department but the meals on Sea Adventurer were already beginning to impress us a lot. Outside, the grand eye-popping ocean scenery drifted by, generating ‘wows’ from the passengers. A zodiac transfer in the afternoon landed us on Deception Island, a collapsed volcanic cone flooded by the sea and navigable only through a very narrow channel. Inside, Whalers’ Bay was the site of a large whaling industry from 1906 to 1931. The abandoned buildings and tanks now lay on volcanic gravel and mud, sagging and slowly decaying. There’s still some geothermal activity going on here; surprisingly the water is quite warm just a few cm below the gravel at the beach. The air isn’t though.
