01-04-08 Our Last Landing and Zodiac Cruising

Danco Island is a one mile long island which lies in the southern part of the Errera Channel, off the west coast of Graham Island was first charted by Gerlache and is named for the geophysicist who died during the Belgica expedition of 1897. Gentoo penguins breed here as well as snowy sheathbills, kelp gulls, and blue-eyed shags.

Here is a group photo from a plateau on Danko Island.

Landing at Danko was so beautiful. It was good to be out in the bright blue skies for the first time. The pictures' colors are much better. We saw a huge colony of Gentoo penguins and they were all walking in their penguin super highways to the ocean...too cute. Here is a little guy marching in the packed snow.

You can see the ship out in the bay, and notice the size of that iceberg sitting out to its left. Those things were enormous and would look down as we sailed by threatening to decimate the ship's sides if we got too close.

The views from the top of the peak were beautiful, it was so nice to look out and see for miles. The icebergs and penguins were so scenic. When we first got to the top there was a really cute line of penguin tracks across the unblemished snow.

We figured we would mess up the beautiful scenery and have a snow ball fight. It was awesome. I ended up tackling a few people by the end of it and Robin had snow shoved in her face and mouth. Matt had snow all down his back. Not suprising that we were making a ton of noise too :-) Here is me killing Jamie...

And Matt....

These penguins were enjoying the gorgeous senic views too. I love the patterns that the smaller ice pieces made in the icy blue sea. And here is the awesome, "I've finally made it" picture. Continent #5 down!!

Next, we loaded up the zodiacs back onto the boat and sailed down to the Melchior Islands and a couple of small protected straits where we could just go cruising in the zodiac to enjoy the beautiful weather. On our way to the channel, we followed a pod of humpback whales and as we were going out the zodiacs we were crossing our fingers for an up close encounter with them. However, we didn't see any more whales, BUT...the icebergs were beautiful. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures. And I put one in there to give you reference for size, that zodiac has 12 people in it.

After the zodiac cruises...it was time to bid farewell to the frozen paradise. This is the last shot of the land that I saw before we were totally back into the Drake.