Antarctica, Melchior Islands
Day 8, ship cruise
With no landings planned today, we were eating breakfast at the very civilised hour of 8.00 when Rolf's call over the PA system announced humpback whales in the distance, but getting closer. When his second call told us one had just been seen breaching, we instantly abandoned our cups of tea, I grabbed my jacket, Niall his camera, and we ran for the deck. Sure enough, a small pod of whales was spouting not too far off.
The captain's excellent piloting kept us level with the family group as they cruised along, eventually coming very close to the ship so we could see their huge shapes just below the water as we hung over the bow rail. Several more humpbacks were blowing in the distance and the whales seemed set to hang around for a while so Rolf decided we could start the day's zodiac cruise earlier than planned to take advantage of the rare opportunity.
Day 8, zodiac cruise
Torn between the need to put on warm clothing (and for Niall to download photos; he'd filled his 2 gigabytes of memory cards already) and to stay and watch the whales, we compromised by keeping an eye on things through our cabin porthole while dressing as quickly as possible. Stuffing bites of leftover breakfast croissant into my mouth in between pulling on hat, gloves and two jackets, I felt like a kid playing party games. Christmas morning at age five couldn't have been more exciting than the imminent prospect of getting into a small zodiac amongst humpback whales.
At first try Arjen broke his zodiac's starter cord and once again we had to squash extra people into the remaining boats. Finally we were all loaded and set off to mingle with the whales. The first barnacle-encrusted back to appear next to our zodiac gave us real sense of scale and then we didn't know where to look next - there were dorsal fins and tails appearing in every direction. Groups of whales were co-operating to blow circles of bubbles to trap krill; a giant mouth would then rise vertically from the centre of the bubble net and hoover up the meal. We all held our breath as Oleg drove his boat across the middle of one of these circles but the whales were well aware of our position and no disaster ensued. Later on his passengers did get sprayed with a light mist when a whale surfaced to breathe very close by.
After an hour cruising in amongst the whales (it seemed like barely a few minutes), it was time to leave them to feed in peace. Regretfully, we motored off to a sheltered corner of the bay where we were consoled by the spectacular scenery and impressive icebergs, many with their own seal and gull populations.
The captain came out with the last zodiac, now repaired, and a few of us transferred into his boat for the final part of the trip. We pottered down narrow channels between small islands, the pebble sea bed easily visible through the clear, still water. The sun warmed the black rubber of the zodiac to a very pleasant temperature and the whole area seemed idyllic. It seemed unbelievable that our stay in the Antarctic could be over so soon.
