22ND JANUARY

We again woke to Troels cheerful chatter over the speakers and were told that breakfast would be served in half an hour. On making our way down for breakfast and having the usual battle for a place in the toaster queue we got our breakfast and to our joy they were serving baked beans! Wow, what a treat, its funny to think that you could get so excited about baked beans but we hadn’t had them for so long it felt like a real big treat! At the end of breakfast we were told that visibility was extremely low, but our planned zodiac trip around Astrolabe Island was still on.

After changing and making our way down to the zodiac point we were greeted with a very eerie view that resembled something out of a sci-fi movie. A thick fog engulfed our ship and all that was visible was the gentle ripple of the calm waters surrounding us. It was difficult to even see the zodiacs that

were being driven round to the boarding side. It was a very surreal view and you got a strange but calm feeling as you climbed aboard the zodiacs. One by one the zodiacs headed off and disappeared from view. We got in the third zodiac with our Gucci wearing young and good looking Russian zodiac driver by the name of Sergey, otherwise known as Speedy. We moved away from the ghostly looking ship and found ourselves idling whilst waiting for the last zodiac to be launched. It was a very supernatural experience due to the stillness of both water and air. We were just 11 people in a fog engulfed zodiac floating almost silently through the Antarctic waters. We heard the buzz of Speedy’s radio and then the next thing we were off. Fog didn’t worry our Speedy and we were flying through the water, every now and again just catching sight of the zodiacs in front of us.

After a good 15 minutes whizzing