Antarctica Day 4 - Half Moon Island
December 28, 2014 to January 9, 2015
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Today’s the day! We woke up to seeing land out our window – so amazing. We got up at 7am and had breakfast. After breakfast we came back to the room to get all of our layers on (whew that’s hot on the boat)! At 9am we went down to the mudroom with our wetskins on and switched out our shoes for the gumboots. Lifejackets on, we headed out onto deck to go to the gangway. The zodiacs would pull up and down the stairs we went to hop on. It was very quick over to shore – just a couple minutes. Our first stop was Hope Bay, where we visited Half Moon Island. It was actually fairly warm on the excursion – the sun was out and very little wind.
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We were able to walk around for over 2 hours. The snow was very deep in places, you would take a step and sink to your knees. The penguins were everywhere and were so much fun to sit and watch. We saw one weddell seal, and then at the top of the walk there was a big colony of chinstrap penguins, including 1 macaroni penguin (with the yellow "feather"). There were a couple penguin chicks - so cute. We got back on the zodiacs around 11:45 and returned to the ship.
