Continental landings
By Jaimy de Vries
Who can say they set foot on the Antarctica continent? Well not many people, but I did! My goal is to visit all seven continents and this was the toughest. It felt glorious to step foot an Antarctica. I celebrated this with lots of pictures of course, then I have some proof to show at home.
On our second day we weren’t landing on an island of the Antarctic Peninsula, but this time the actual continent. And besides that it was so nice to finally step foot on the continent, it was also an amazing place. The place is called Neko Harbour. It’s nestled at the bottom of the Andvord bay. Neko Harbour is named for a whaling ship which anchored there in the early 1900’s. Neko harbour is a beautiful bay with its dramatic ice walls descending from the mountains. Neko Harbour glacier is said to be one of the most active in this region. During our short time there we heard sounds resembling distant thunder, indicating that calving can happen anytime. The site was wonderful. We saw a small promontory with several colonies of gentoo penguins. We saw lots of pinguin highways too. They even used our highways that we created to climb a little bit higher to get a panoramic view over the Andvord bay. Close to the shore we saw a female elephant seal who was resting because she was molting. She gave us a little show with scratching her neck and stretching her body. I combined this landing with a kayak tour. I had enough time to take the climb and made a nice jumping photo to celebrate were on the seventh continent!
The next morning we had a continental landing again! That is quite rare because most of the times the weather conditions are too bad to go on land at the continent. But we were lucky and we enjoyed a sunny continental landing. I enjoyed a walk on a snowy hill that offered a spectacular view on the sea and mountains. We also had a chance to observe a resting Weddell seal on the shoreline and some fur seals in the distance.
