Antarctic Scenery

Antarctica is the best continent for natural beauty. This is the only place on earth where you can travel for days and days and see no sign
of people. For the most part Antarctica is just frozen and lifeless, but the perimeter of Antarctica is where you can find all the wildlife,
especially on it's peninsula. There is a section of Antarctica called the dry valleys, and it has not snowed there in millions of years. In the
winter time Antarctica almost doubles in size as the ocean around it freezes. The most exotic part of Antarctica is the Antarctic
Peninsula; this is the warmest part and is visited by many animals for breeding during the austral summer which is from October to
February. My first picture is of the snow covered mountains. The next is some colorful rocks that continue down into the ocean.

With the bright sun and all the dry ice, the picture on the left
might make calling Antarctica a desert more understandable.
In the middle of the summer the days are very long with only a
few hours of darkness. Above is the sun setting at dusk which
lasts for a very long time.

Antarctica - Rock Formation In South Shetland Islands

Antarctica - Grass In South Shetland Islands

Antarctica - Pebbles In South Shetland Islands

The picture on the upper left was my first glimpse of Antarctica. This continent was only discovered in the 19th
century. Imagine sailing in a ship and discovering a wall of ice and dark clouds and realizing you just found an
entire continent. Sailing in Antarctica can be pretty dangerous because you have to go through the Drake Passage
if you're coming from South America. On the way back we sailed around Cape Horn, which is said to be one of
the most dangerous places in the world for ships. We had some 40 foot waves outside, but it's said that
sometimes they can reach 80 feet. The rocking was so bad I wondered if getting out of bed would be too
dangerous, but I tried it anyway. Afterwards I would lie in my bed which had seat belts and I'd get a feeling of
being weightless, then I'd feel like someone was forcing my face into the bed as the ship rocked back and forth.
Sailing around Cape Horn was definitely an experience. Once in Antarctica the ice in the water is probably the
most dangerous threat to ships. In the top right picture, that bay was completely empty of ice an hour earlier. I had
been on land when suddenly a huge building size piece of ice fell into the water. This created a huge wave and
when it rose against the ice behind it, it had an almost neon blue appearance. The ice quickly broke up and as you
can see in the upper right picture, it filled up the entire bay with sheet ice. The crew was worried our ship would
get stuck but we were able to make it out with no problems.

On the left is me hiking on the
mainland near some penguins.
On another day I thought it
was a good idea to go
swimming. I did a cannon ball
into the ocean and swam
around for about a minute. I
think the water was so cold
that the shock of it all made it
feel not so bad. When I got
out of the water I felt very
warm, but my skin had a
numb tingly feeling almost like
a small electric shock.

You might be surprised to see that the Antarctic Peninsula actually
has patches of moss. It grows very slowly taking hundreds of
years to get as large as seen above. On the right is the more
common view of the black rock mountains rising out of the water

My last four pictures are of the South Shetland Islands. They are some distance from the mainland and even have
some grassy areas. On the left you can see the many colors of the pebbles on the beach. On the right is a towering
rock formation that is populated with many birds.

Here you can see penguins in the South Shetland Islands. You can tell right away that the terrain here is very different
from mainland Antarctica, these islands are about 80 miles north of the Antarctic Peninsula.