Half Moon Island

In the afternoon, we had our final shore landing on Half Moon Island.  This is a lovely island, with a great colony of chinstraps as well as some adelies and gentoos.

There is a science station, but we decided to spend our time at the other end of the island with the feathered inhabitants.

We landed in a nice spot and trudged up the slope, passing a few stray penguins as we went.  The walk along to the colony was on the side of the slope, and it did feel a bit hairy at times.

The pathway was quite slippery and there was quite a wind blowing at the time, so it did feel that you could lose your footing and end up rolling down the hill.  Thankfully we didn't.

We passed a bit of rock within a gull nesting on it, and stopped to take a few photos there and look out across the sea.  By this time, although the wind was a bit chilly, it was a nice day, and the sea looked a lovely blue against the snowy island scenery.

Further along the way a seal had hauled out onto the beach.  It cast a wary eye our way, but carried on sunning itself.

A couple of penguins came walking along and seemed a bit perturbed to see this enormous creature blocking their way.

They waddled around for a while, but then decided that it wasn't going anywhere, so they would just have to make their way around it.

As we continued to the colony, we found ourselves in a lot of deep snow again, and we were frequently up to our knees.

Thankfully unlike the Devils Island day, here we knew we were on an island, so we weren't going to suddenly drop into freezing seas.  It still made it hard work walking though.  But we got there.

We watched the penguins for a while and then decided to go on to where some other seals had been spotted.  Except here the snow was even worse, with every step landing us knee deep or worse.

We ploughed on for a while before deciding that we were going so slowly that we would probably not make it there and then get back in time for the zodiac, so we turned around and plodded our way back to the landing site instead.

Oh and this is our last landing in Antarctica, so we have to say a fond farewell to the penguins.