December 31, 2024

We were filled with excitement as we pulled into Damoy Point – our first landing in Antarctica! The day before we had sat in on an expedition briefing for the different excursions they offer on the cruise. They offer: snowshoeing, kayaking, science boats, and camping. They had explained that they want each passenger to at least get one of these optional excursions, but the system doesn’t understand prioritization.

So if you wanted to do kayaking and snowshoeing – you might only get one – and it could be your second choice. I had never done snowshoeing (I know – being from Minnesota you would think I would have done it at least once, but alas, never!) so we chose that as our excursion. Hoping that we would be selected for that since we hadn’t registered for anything else.

We were chosen – and actually got to snowshoe on our first landing! I don’t want to complain, but the weather was almost too nice and we quickly began sweating from climbing up the hill. It was a great time to take a brief pause to look at all of the wildlife! There were so many penguins, and it’s just so incredible to see them in real life… in their natural environment!

Their penguin highways show their frequent paths in their different rookeries, where you could see their nests. On this landing, we saw Gentoo penguins with their trademark orange “lipstick” and humpback whales in the distance.

It truly was magical! This particular landing also had forts that we could go into, one of them was built by the British. Before we could enter, we had to wait for a wandering penguin to make its way to its nest. By the looks of it, a few penguins actually liked to make their nests below the fort. This fort had recently been restored to its original condition, which included the bright orange exterior.

We returned to the ship and had lunch. Afterwards, we had a celebratory glass of champagne and lots of laughs while trying to do a photoshoot with our balloon number “7” to celebrate our seventh continent. HX had organized a presentation with the staff that were living in Port Lockroy, the Penguin Post Office aka the southernmost post office in the world. Our presenter was the Post Master himself, which was pretty cool to hear about how things operate there. You can read more about Port Lockroy here if you’re interested in learning more about the mission and history of it!

Following the presentation, they had set up some tables where we could buy our very own Antarctica souvenirs! We didn’t know we would have this opportunity, so we were pretty excited to buy some and mail them out of Port Lockroy. (They said on average it would take 1-2 months to deliver!)

This stop also allowed for a zodiac tour to Port Lockroy. We were able to see the different structures that make up the area, including the post office and museum. The tour lasted about 35 minutes before bringing us back to the ship for dinner.

This was the only night that the ship would be putting on entertainment. There is a traditional “sketch” called Dinner for One that is watched or performed on New Year’s Eve. Our expedition director and another two individuals from the team performed this for us, many of us were laughing at how absurd it was. You can read more here if you’re interested!

The crew pulled together a rather impressive house band, called Rolling Waves. It was pretty incredible that they had that many talented individuals that they could put on a show for the guests on NYE!

It was incredible to ring in 2025 from Antarctica!

Up Next:
– Petermann Island