Into the ice...

As we approached Antarctica, ice floes appeared and then became frequent. These can damage the Orion's stabilisers, so we had to pull them in, allow more rocking, slow down somewhat, putting us a little behind the anticipated arrival time. But late in the day, by 18:30 - 19:00 we left the swells behind and pulled into Dallman Bay. Immediately, we were treated to two fabulous spectacles, whales and icebergs. The fog remained, but thinned somewhat as time went on.

Dallman Bay was our first stop in Antarctic, separating Anvers Island and Brabant Island.

Inside the Orion's observation lounge.

Everyone was on desk with this first close-up exposure to Antarctica

We need Doug Gould to identify all these birds!

Seabirds love swirling around the Orion.

A mother and rather large calf humpback whale surfaced and breathed and dived numerous times, and even breached once, right off the foredeck of the Orion. Other whales were about, but not as close as this couple. Whales are pretty unphotogenic, but we managed some nice images, as shown. Marieke Egan, our whale specialist, tried to predict their behaviour pretty accurately, to assist us to get ready with the camera.

Yep, it's a humpback!

Cliched, but nothing can beat the sight of a humpback whale tail as it dives.

Humpback and calf!

Multiple humpback displays delighted us all.

Erin McFadden, the expedition undersea specialist, explained that humpbacks and other baleen whales don't have to dive so deeply, because the krill they feed on inhabit only about 200m down. Tom Ritchie believes that they find the krill by listening for them when the depth makes it too difficult to see them. Toothed sperm whales, Erin says, dive deeply (almost to 3000m) to find their food, deepwater squid, and use echo-location to find them.

And the captain was able to manoeuvre the Orion quite close to a particularly shapely iceberg, which then had the good fortune for it to capture a rare sunbeam.

Our first close-up of an iceberg, and the sun gods lit it up for us.

The sun was really trying at this stage!

Not a bad view from the cabin?

Blue ice and artful iceberg design.

At dinner, we had the luck and the honour to sit with one of National Geographic's top photographers, Dan Westergren. He had previously told us all about impossible photographic assignments he had undertaken, and over dinner we discussed his recent project in South Australia, where, amazingly, it transpired, he flew and stayed with the same family company that we used for a flooded Lake Eyre homestay and flyover a few years ago!

That night we discovered that we were far enough south that it never gets dark. Official sunset is about 22:30, and sunrise at about 04:00, but twilight prevailed in the intervening period.