The journey part 1

well dressed for a trip south???

After many delays, we finally got underway. The first night heading down the Derwent river was a most pleasurable start. Almost immediately the hacky sack came out on the helideck and was just about the most common past time on the ship. With the smooth start, everyone had high hopes for the rest of the journey. It wasn't to be. Some of the guys were taken down the next day with sea sickness, some weren't to be seen until a week or so later. Some even spent time with the doc on IV fluids - but not me! I had an absolute ball on the ship. I only ever missed breakfasts, cause i was always up too late from the night before playing cards, darts, spotlight, indoor soccer, trivial pursuit, pictionary, twister (quite difficult in 6m side swells!) or just chatting to many wonderful new friends. A few of us decided to take over the disused bar (it's a dry ship now...) and we turned it into our personal entertainment area, playing tunes and dvds and just hanging out. There was a group of us who were dubbed the cool kids gang (by ourselves!) and if there was anything fun happening we had usually caused it. Hi Bonnie, Lisa and Nick! You crazy cats are a fantastic bunch, you really made the trip as good as it was. Thanks trendsetters...

Me, Bonnie, Nick, and Lisa, with Chris

One of the more entertaining things that happened was a good old fashioned cabin stuffing. On walking into my room one day I was confronted with four people (a little squashy for a three berth cabin), so decided to see just how many people we could get in there. Unfortunately, it was just on dinner time so we struggled to get all the people I wanted. After we all took photos from various vantage points, we all filed out. The final count was 43 people. I estimate we could have squeezed in 60ish as we didn't utilise the bathroom (lack of people), but the bar has now been set, and the rumour is that a well organised attempt will be carried out as the ship heads over to Casey.

Alright, who farted?!?!

When we saw our first iceberg, i think we nearly melted the poor bugger, so many flashes were going off. The iceberg sweep hadn't even started yet, and conveniently the berg wouldn't have counted anyway, the crew declared it too small. We didn't see another one for two days, but then it was on. The few hours of twilight gave us some interesting colours to backdrop some of the bergs.The most amazing time was on the final approach into Davis, through an area known as Iceberg Alley. A few of us got up at 0530 to see this and we weren't disappointed. Words just can't describe how fantastic it was.

Paul in front of our first berg

One of the stars of Iceberg alley

That's all I have got time for at the moment, I really need to sleep. We had Christmas yesterday, the 26th, because the Aurora Australis was in port unloading cargo and picking up people, and i didn't get to bed till 0730 this morning....

*Some of the photos for the next couple of posts may not be mine, thanks go to Nick, Lisa and Bonnie for kindly sharing some of their brilliant shots with me (and each other).