We spent the morning at Brown Station located in Paradise Harbor.

I woke up at 7:30 am, opened the window shade, and saw two whales swimming in the harbor. I watched them for an hour, and then we had to get ready for our first excursion of the day. Our excursion was another trip on the special ops boat, and we went whale-watching in the harbor! We spent half an hour in the middle of the water with whales surfacing and diving and they fed on krill. We also got a whiff of the whales, and boy are they stinky! (I think it was the air that came out of their blowholes.)

Brown Station is an Argentine research station on a small peninsula on the continent. The scientists don’t arrive until next month, so we were able to go to shore and walk around. This is a research station, on the continent, with a penguin colony. As our guide said, “Check, check, check!”

We arrived at the shore and had to climb up several steps to get up to the station. It was a little hairy, especially for some of the older people on this trip.

We were able to hike up the hill above the research station and go to a lookout point over the harbor. We saw a mother whale and her calf traveling by and had beautiful views of the harbor.

On the back side of the peninsula, there was a little cove with huge glaciers spilling into it and icebergs all around. We also saw several Weddell seals having a nap on the other side of the cove.

On the way back to the zodiac, I stopped to watch the penguins waddle around. There were a couple of penguin highways (penguin trails) that crossed our human trail, so I had to wait for penguins to pass by before I could continue on my way. We’ve been told not to stand on the penguin highways or get too near to the penguins, because we don’t want to discourage them from traveling freely around their habitat.

We came back to the ship in time for a leisurely lunch. As we ate, we saw several more whales swimming back and forth alongside the ship, feeding on krill. Olivia came on the intercom and said, “We have whales all around us, on the starboard side, on the port side, off the bow, off the stern. It’s a bit of a whale soup out there!” It was pretty incredible.

After lunch, we went to our cabin to rest. At 3 pm, Olivia came on the intercom and said, “Good afternoon, I’m sorry to bother you during your afternoon rest, but we see a large group of orcas up ahead so we’re going to detour to see if we can get close to them.” Of course, everyone rushed to the bow of the ship!

There were 15 or so orcas hunting in packs, back and forth in front of the ship. We also saw three or four humpback whales feeding out there including a baby, so there was some drama amongst us as we worried about the baby. It appears to have gotten away unharmed. Once again, an amazing experience.

We ended the day with a fancy dinner at one of the sit-down restaurants on the ship. Up until now, we had been eating at the buffet restaurants, so it was fun to have a different dinner experience.

We spent the night in a picturesque little harbor surrounded by mountains, glaciers, icebergs, and whales.

I was in my pajamas and in bed by 9:30 after another remarkable day.