Our Final Day at Sea before Reaching Antarctica. Plus our First Iceberg Encounters.

Today: Sunrise 5:19 AM. Sunset 10:51 PM.

We begin the day in the middle of Drake Passage about halfway between the southern tip of South America and Palmer Station, Antarctica (red dot) in map above.

Mid-afternoon as I’m pulling out clothes for our first ‘dressy’ night in the main dining room (there will be 4 dressy nights over the 22 day cruise), I turn and look out the balcony and the site of my first iceberg completely baffles my mind.

Because I’d never seen an iceberg before, I literally had to do a double-take and then hollered at Trina saying ‘LOOK!’ I can’t explain it, but, it just doesn’t register until you look at it for a while. It’s larger than the ship we’re on, by a long shot. First, I just stared in awe. Then, I took 100 photo’s as if I might not ever see another. A few of them are below and this is quite literally, the first iceberg of the trip and we’re still over 150 miles from the Antarctic Peninsula. Yes, it’s a little overboard with three still shots, a video, and then a wide angle shot of once iceberg.

A few more icebergs before we head to our first dressy night dinner. I admit, often when I see icebergs, they make me think of something else, some other shape, some reference. So, yes, you might see me giving them names. They’re not official.