64° 50'S 64° 50'W, None - Polarsteps

This morning we were not the first ones up for a change. We encountered two of the expedition crew, (early birder) Jean and Greg, in the observatory. They were busy putting stamps on all of the postcards that we handed in the night before. They thought that we wouldn't be allowed to land all together at Port Lockroy due to covid, and that they had to post the postcards for us📬. Unexpectedly, we also were allowed to visit port Lockroy! 🥳 This also enabled us to find our first (and only) geocache on Antarctica, how cool is that! The day started, however, with a Zodiac cruise towards Jougla Point, where we saw (what else) heaps of Penguins and a really cool skeleton of a whale! Only when you see the skeleton, you realise how big whales actually are! After Jougla Point we landed at the base of Port Lockroy. It is still manned (or womanned?) by four young women from the UK. They live in a modernist building in the back of the base, while the official building is converted into an interesting small museum. It displays the way the base looked during the times of the British research Station / whaling-period. Back then it was more of a mancave, the wall paintings of barely clothed women still remembers of this time. Honestly, it didn't look to bad at all. We wouldn't mind having stayed there for a few months! ☺️ The weather changed for the better and back on the ship we took advantage of this during a small fotoshoot while sailing in our new direction📸. We were planning to visit Wilhelmina Bay -named after our former queen 👸🏻 as a gift by the Belgian explorers. However, when we were almost there, some huge icebergs blocked our way🧊. So we had to head back and the expedition team managed to improvise another zodiac excursion. Only in Antarctica! During the ride our eyes were tricked by seeing several seal-shaped-rocks or were it rock-shaped-seals? We will ask Norm! After we got back from the excursion, we went into the sauna and celebrated Megans birthday.