3 February - Cape Adare/Cape Hallett - -1 degree Celcius - 71 degrees 41 minutes South

My alarm went off at 2, but it was far too befuddled to get up for an hour or so. Dad was up and out, but back in the cabin every five minutes for another scarf, hat or shirt and letting me know cold it was ("Not in bed, Geoff"). However, there is something about a crack and shudder when you are on a boat to massage your curiosity, so I got up to find us pushing through some light pack ice, surrounded by massive tabular bergs, Adelie penguins scampering over the ice and orcas surfacing and hunting around the bergs. It was so cold and my head was still in sleep mode, so my camera work was pretty shoddy, but there are some nice shots of some icebergs and I managed one of some penguins diving. This is much more like what I expected Antarctica to be like. Although it is freezing, it is hard to go inside; there is always something more fascinating to keep you outside a little longer.

Cape Adare was blocked by icebergs. Massive hulking icebergs. So we have had to skip it and started heading down to Cape Hallett. Adare has Mawson's hut and Borchgrevnik's hut as well as an Adelie penguin colony, so hopefully we get to visit on the way back up, as long as a wind comes along to shift the ice away. At the moment, I think we want to leave as much time as possible to get to Cape Evans and the hut from Scott's last expedition.

Once we got to Cape Hallett, we discovered bergs grounded up on the shore, so we have cut our losses, and are heading for Franklin Island in the Ross Sea, hoping to arrive tomorrow evening. From there, we will head straight to Ross Island and hope to land there on Monday night.

I also found out in the afternoon that during the night, we had passed the Farley Mowat, a Sea Shepard anti-whaling vessel that was patrolling and looking for whaling ships. I also snapped some shots of a Korean longline fishing boat in the afternoon.

Now we are below 66 degrees south, the sun doesn't set below the horizon, so even at midnight, it is bright. It's very weird, especially after the short days back in Amsterdam.