First of all, today I have to say Happy Birthday Dad! It’s a shame I wasn’t able to phone home today to wish my Dad a Happy 61st! Birthday. It is possible to use the ship’s satellite phone for international phone calls and internet access, but at a starting rate of $120US I don’t think he’ll mind till we get back.

Last night during dinner we were joined by 2 or 3 whales off both port and starboard sides of the ship, they were quite far in the distance, but you could make out their huge bodies and tails that occasionally came out of the water like you see on nature programs. The first person to spot it was a Spanish lady and she won a bottle of champagne for it, all the champagne bottle have been won now and we didn’t even come close. As well as the whale spotting competition there was the iceberg spotting contest, first person to spot an iceberg bigger than the ship, which was won by a Spanish fellow during lunch. The other one was guess the time we’ll cross the Antarctic convergence, which is a natural line in the water where the temperature drops by 2 degrees in only a few metres. This was won by an American lady, who guessed correctly with 11pm, me and Dolly were way out with 6.45am and 9.30am respectively.

This morning we headed into Neko Harbor, and our first landing on mainland Antarctica, which means we officially bagged our seventh and final continent. Today was definitely one to remember as we weaved in and out of the icebergs getting to and from the ship in the nippy little Zodiac cruisers. We walked to the top of a small hill, that looked like a mini mountain really, it took us just over an hour and the views from the top were just breathtaking, making it more than worth the effort of the tough hike up there in knee deep snow. The snow made the hike down much more fun as we slid most of it, I took a running jump landing on my front and must have covered about 200 metres in about 3 seconds! Dolly was rather more elegant sliding down in a much more timely fashion on her derrière.

After 3 hours at Neko Harbor and little cruise on the Zodiacs it was time to head back to the ship again, collect our awaiting hot chocolate and settle down for a spot of lunch as the ship trundled along to Culverville Island. This afternoon’s jaunt out was to one of the largest colony’s of Gentoo penguins in the area, we wandered around as usual, very quietly trying to get a close as we could to the little blighters to grab that perfect shot. Speaking of which, some people are taking their photography very seriously. A young American couple has three digital SLR cameras with them, all with mahoosive lens, and at the moment they are averaging 1000 shots a day each! That’s 20,000 photos to sort through at the end of the trip! At the moment we’re heading for about 1500 high quality photos and video clips, which should fit on 10 CD’s. Luckily there’s a CD burner on the ships PC.

After another hearty meal served by the excellent waiters and prepared by the equally excellent chef most of the passengers headed to bed at 9.45pm just in time for the nightly ten O’clock movie. Click here for Day 6

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