Off into the sunset …

We arrived in Lima fairly late at night and so didn’t get a good sense of what the city looked like as we were driven to our hotel. The following morning, however, we were picked up by our tour guide for a city tour. We had a look at some of the dramatic coastal escarpment (of […]

Everything went smoothly for our arrival and tours in Buenos Aires. [We had told a company, Chimu Adventures, some of the key things we wanted to do on the South America part of the trip, and they organised these bits, plus extra day trips, with airport and hotel pickups that we didn’t have to think about, […]

After docking in the morning we had the best part of the day free in Ushuaia, although it took us a while to find a place to store our luggage. Once this was achieved we took a bus to the almost-end of Argentina, to visit Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego for a chance to see some […]

We interrupt our photographs of ice/snow, icebergs and rocks to bring you some … grass! Our final port of call in Antarctica was Roberts Point on Robert Island in the South Shetlands (S 62°26.7′ W 59°23.5′). Here the ship’s botanist finally had the chance to get excited, with the presence of one of Antarctica’s two flowering […]

We had known for a couple of days that dinner on Christmas eve was going to be a significant ship-board event. A few of us hatched a plan to make it even more Christmassy and special by lining up some carolling and singing. We thought Silent Night might be widely enough known to be able to […]

After lunch we started making our way northward, heading up the Gerlach Strait between the Antarctic Peninsula and Anvers and Brabant Islands as a big step in our journey back to South America. The weather wasn’t the best — overcast and a bit windy — but this helped to remind us how bleak it can be […]

Goudier Island (S 64°49.5′ W 63°29.7′) is about the size of a hockey field, and sits in Port Lockroy which is part of Wiencke Island. It is home to an old British base that dates back to the second world war, which is now a designated historic site. Volunteers from the UK’s Antarctic Heritage Trust work […]

At about 11:30pm there were some breaks in the cloud as the sun approached the horizon, and as I was still up I headed outside in the hope of a spectacular sunset. I was not disappointed.

Some orange-tinged rays of light hit one of the nearby peaks.

Meanwhile, the sun itself was setting behind some other peaks in […]

Over lunch we motored northward to Wiencke Island, where we came ashore at Dorian Bay (S 64°49′ W 63°30′), just below the two relatively small huts — one Argentinian, the other British — perched on the hillside. The British one is no longer used but is a designated historic site; the Argentinian refuge is older and […]