Day 27 - Last Day in Antarctica!

Back up again at 5am, hopefully for the last time!  Same step up, base camp in the middle for the best viewing options!  Jane and I got there early to set up our seats.  Barry, Mom, Jeff, Art, Pat and a few others joined us around 6am!  We needed to be up early today because we are going to Palmer Station. 

Around 6 am, scientists from Palmer Station took a zodiac from the station to our ship!  It was need to see them sailing across the ocean!  There were 10 people in one Zodiac!  They came on board and later that day gave presentations about what they do at the station.  

At 6:30 Karen comes in to the Crow's Nest to find us and informs us that we can go to the Bridge again this morning! So Jane, Barry, Jeff, my mom and I were given a special treat! We had a wonderful opportunity to get a better understanding of how operations and controls at the Bridge were run!  We talked extensively with Captain Mercer and he explained how they chart their path, what nautical instruments were used to located objects in the water.  We were able to see how safety was handled from the bridge as well as many more exciting things!  I am really really lucky to have had the opportunity to now go to the bridge twice!

We then went to hear the presentation from the scientists but before that Karen found me to get a picture with all of the scientists!  The presentation was extremely informative and gave me tons of insight on the projects, experiments as well as daily living at the station.  There were a total of 8 people that ended up staying on the ship and when they go back, 2 more people will come over on the zodiac and stay until Punta Arenas.  Some were divers, supervisors, lab technicians  and environmental experimenters and it was so interesting to learn more about their life on Antarctica!

After the presentation, we watched the scientists head back to Palmer Station!

After we just sat and watched the scenery!  

There was a huge school of penguins swimming by!

We went up to the pool on the outside deck, not to swim, just to look!

We really enjoyed the scenery!

Everything was just wonderful!

Oh my! There was whales swimming alongside the ship! You could see their fins and tails!

In the evening, Captain Mercer came on the speaker and informed us that there is a huge storm of monstrous proportions (we heard Captains never use those words) and therefore we need to high tail it out of this area to avoid this storm!  Although he did inform us that we will hit some part of the storm and therefore we need to place everything in our cabins off the shelves and put anything breakable on the floor!  So we went back to our cabins to secure the valuables!