Day 10: Wednesday, January 8th, 2014
Steps taken: 11,545
This was the last morning of excursions. The morning excursion was to Deception Island. It is an inactive super volcano. We hiked up the trail where there was a bowl shaped valley below. We trekked down around the valley and along the coast back towards the zodiacs. There were many penguins and seals along the coast. A few of us took some icicles that hung low from the heavy snow packed above the coast, and ate them. Best icicle I've ever had. (That's some high quality H2O.) We also pretended we were fighting avalanches. After we had our fun we took a zodiac back to the ship.
After lunch we had a little time to kill before the afternoon excursion. We relaxed until that point and then it was off to Yankee Harbor. Scott, Dan, and I walked along the rocky shores discussing infinite parallel universes. Were we similar in alternative universes? Radically different? Still alive? Maybe I'm actually a wolf in another dimension. Perhaps there is another universe where either I didn't have wanderlust or the need to travel as much as I have been doing in the past five years. Maybe there is a universe where Lydia decided on a life with me, and we traveled the world together. Whatever happened in other universes I am content with what I've decided and done with my life thus far in this universe.
As for Yankee Harbor itself, there were penguins as far as the eyes can see in some stretches. Many of them had their chicks hatch fairly recently. We had seen baby penguins before, but there were so many here. (Insert collective "Daaaaawwwwwwwwwwwww!" here.) After an hour or so, the cold was bothering me a bit, however I toughed it out for another hour because we had to make our final landing last.
We returned to beef broth and snacks. I showered and got into my dress clothes (sans dress shoes) in anticipation of the 'Black & White' events. Black & White dinner was blissful & wonderful. The appetizer was a choice between California rolls or mussels. I chose the mussels, but it was not an easy choice. We also had fish soup. For the main course I had steak. Dessert was black & white mocha cake.
After dinner there was a contest for best costume. So many new breeds of penguins! Frank has his work cut out for him with researching them all. There were many festivities that followed such as a viewing of Sleepy Hollow (not really sure why they didn't show Happy Feet since Sleepy Hollow has nothing to do with Antarctica.) in the Discovery Lounge, and Parker playing in the Polar Bear Bar, however a group of us desecrated the library with a three hour Cards Against Humanity session. Jessi, Lisa, Sabrina, Dave, Melvin, Phil, Thomas, and I became worse people together scaring off anyone who might have wanted to spend a quiet night there. I went to bed at 1:30 hoping I wouldn't have dreams against humanity.
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