Paradise, Antarctica

These are among the best days of my life. I started the day zigzagging through immense, textured icebergs of unimaginable shapes and size. Skeletons of ships, long since abandoned. Birds and seals and whales and penguins.

I ended the day dancing with a minke whale.

In between, there was every shade of blue. There were nesting chinstrap penguins and porpoising Gentoos. There were glaciers and mountains. Brash ice and the cold, blue sea.

Sitting on a rock watching chinstrap penguins waddle and snuggle with their chicks, overlooking whale spouts in the distance, I didn’t think the day could get any better. Then came the minke. We saw her in the distance, as we made our way through a narrow channel. “They’re a little shy”, our expedition leader said. Until they’re not. We idled, hoping for a distant glance. Suddenly, she slid through the water right next to our boat. For twenty minutes, she circled and surfaced. She blew bubbles, and rose up and crashed down. She was close enough to see the baleen of her beautiful mouth.

It is fitting we end this day in a place called Paradise. We’ll spend two nights in Paradise Bay, camping tomorrow night. It is a protected bay, and we are surrounded by majestic mountains and glaciers. Paradise, indeed.