12 October 2008 – day 10 - Sunday

I can't say that today was uneventful, but it wasn't the most exciting day either. I woke up ahead of the alarm clock, when I heard some strange “thump, thump” sounds. After we showered and went outside, it was easy to see what caused the sounds. Our ship, the Skorpios III, was hitting small chunks of ice floating in the water. By “small” I mean they were smaller than our motorcycle.



The farther we went, the bigger and more prevalent the ice chunks became.


Many of the chunks were big, like the size of a car. The air was foggy and the sea was crisp and still as glass.




Finally, the ship was encased in ice chunks. We were floating inside one huge DQ “Mister Misty”. I began to wonder if we would be able to get out or if the ice would freeze together around us, trapping the ship within.


I went up to the bridge and saw it was the captain—and owner—at the helm. That gave me some measure of assurance; he's the most experienced and he's also got the most to lose of any of us.

The captain drove the ship and parked it right in front of our goal: the glacier. Everyone on the boat stood on deck, in awe, and looked at the beautiful blue wall of ice.









Every once in a while, we could hear a loud crack as the ice broke apart. Finally, we could see chunks of ice fall from the glacier into the blue water below. One of them was huge; some of us, including me, set our cameras in continuous shot mode and took a series of photos showing the ice break off. As it hit the sea, it created a huge thunderous noise and a wave that sent the entire ship rocking back and forth. This is no small ship, so it takes quite a lot to make it sway like that.

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After we were done gawking at the glacier, the boat did a u-turn and we headed back out of the channel. The boat continued going North, so most of us sat around in one of the lounges and read our books or played cards.

In the late evening, we reached our second goal, which is another huge glacier. In fact, they said it was the biggest glacier in all of South America. We parked in front of the glacier for the night, and we'll see it in the morning. We went outside to see if we could see anything in the dark. We could just barely make out the shape of the glacier in front of us. My camera didn't even want to cooperate in taking a long exposure.