Overnight we steamed slowly back north to Cuverville Island (named by Gerlache after a French Admiral), between Rongé (a female contributor to Gerlache’s expeditions) Island and the Arctowski Peninsula at the mouth of Andvord Bay. When we awoke it was overcast here and we decided not to go ashore but to relax and enjoy the environment from the ship. Cuverville is home to 4,000 Gentoo Penguins and was the site of an interesting study in the 1990’s that concluded visitor disturbance here had no impact on the overall breeding success of Gentoos.

When the shore party returned, we headed off back south, past Danco Island and via the narrow Errera Channel into Neko Harbour on the east side of Andvord Bay. I spent the whole trip on the bridge with just one or two other passengers dropping by. The entire bridge crew were there checking soundings, icebergs, radar, compass bearings and charts (which are highly inaccurate and incomplete around most of the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions). It was one of the most delightful short passages of the whole trip for me – it somehow felt very remote, very rugged. The sun was shining, not a breath of wind, the mountains, islands and icebergs reflecting on the surface of the water. A perfectly delightful few hours.

In the afternoon, I went ashore at Neko Harbour, which was named after a Norwegian whaling ship and has a tiny refuge hut just above the shore where we landed. We climbed up a hill behind the beach in crunchy snow. It was unusually warm – relatively speaking that is. When you are wearing several layers of clothing 5°C begins to feel pretty hot, especially climbing in the sun up the snow, and everyone was soon stripping off layers. Simon, our Zodiac driver today, said he’d never felt as warm as this on the Peninsula. Neko is yet another lovely spot by a glacier, which calves thunderously sending massive ice fragments into the water and creating mini tsunamis across the bay. There were Gentoo Penguins all over the place here, completely oblivious to human visitors, and we had to be careful not to trip over them. On the way back to Minerva, a Zodiac was tied up to a berg with champagne chilling on the ice to celebrate the New Year; a nice touch we thought.