Some beautiful glacial landscapes on Greenwich Island, Gentoo and Chinstrap Penguins on our final excursion before returning, via the notorious Drake Channel, to South America.
After visiting Deception Island, we set out for Greenwich Island a little to the north. Both of these are part of the South Shetland Islands, just off the Antarctic Peninsula.
Greenwich is home to large colonies of penguins. The Zodiacs landed first at Fort Point, a great rocky landscape and a spit of land with many Gentoo Penguins, fur seals and a few Chinstrap penguins.
After walking amongst the penguins and seals we got back in the Zodiacs and headed around the coast to Hardy Cove which is separated from Fort Point by a beautiful glacier.
Hardy Cove is backed by a snow-covered glacier - we heard several booming noises of avalanches, out of sight.
The landing at Hardy Cove is on a beach covered with large, rounded cobbles, quite difficult to walk on.
We made our way across the to the seaward side and a beautiful landscape of a blue-tinged glacier reaching down to the grey cobble beach.
There were Adelie and Chinstrap Penguins and seals here too, but it was much more about the landscape.
We returned to the ship and all congregated on deck to toast Antarctica as it was our final night here before heading north for the Drake Passage.
The next two days were spent crossing the notorious Drake Passage but it was forecast not to be too bad with only 3.5m swells.
The first night the swells were actually around 4m and it became quite turbulent.
Cape Horn is the southernmost point of South America, on Isla Hornos.
We had made good time and seas were calm. Our ship was given permission to approach within 3.5 nautical miles of Cape Horn.
We then moved off, heading for the Beagle Channel.
That night, our final one on board, we had Captain's Farewell Cocktails and an auction in support of Penguin Watch and the South Georgia Heritage Trust, which looks after the buildings etc. on South Georgia, including the manager's house where Shackleton arrived after his incredible journey and had his first bath! I made a successful bid for a Penguin Watch T-shirt, tote, literature and a glass engraving of penguins! The ship's Antarctica flag went for $3,000!