Day 23 - No midget ponies but lots of angry fur seals

South Shetland Islands - Whaler’s Bay and Half Moon Island

Last excursion day today - so after this no more rugging up with all those layers to leave the ship, though we are now a lot quicker than we were at getting ready.

We woke up to find ourselves in the South Shetland Islands at Deception Bay, in the middle of a still active volcano. The land here was very different, black volcanic rock with just a dusting of snow, and lots of aggressive fur seals. Most of us ran the gauntlet of seals barking and threatening to bite us on each side of the path that had been set for us, K had one aggressively chase her (it's always her, remember the gorillas?), but she managed to avoid it. We had a good hike to a pinnacle with a nice view, dodged the fur seals to make it back to shore, and walked by the ruins of the old British Antarctic base that had been destroyed in a mudslide some years back. Interestingly there was also a small yacht moored in the bay - unusual to see other people, especially on a vessel so small.

Mudslides can be disastrous!

Our final excursion in the afternoon was to Half Moon Island and once again there were a lot of aggressive fur seals to try and navigate past without getting bitten as they claimed their territorial rights to the paths and areas we wanted to walk on. There were also colonies of Chinstrap penguins and one solitary Macaroni Penguin - we are all amused that we can now tell penguins apart. The general feeling is sadness that this is the end of Antarctica, already the landscape is quite different, gone are the fabulous icebergs, the dramatic peaks and glaciers.

"Hello Mr. Penguin". "Hello Mr. Seal".

Ahead of us is the dreaded Drake Passage. The crew introduce Sir Frances Drake as the man we all hate as he conjures up two days of potentially rough passage, so it's time to lock everything away in our cupboards and tie the chair in our cabin to the desk so it doesn't wake us up in middle night crashing to the floor as it has done in the past.