The cold never bothered me anyway

One of Cierva Cove's massive icebergs

For our last day of expeditions we weren't told where we would go the day before, the schedule had always been posted on the main screens the evening before, but not this time. My gut feeling told me we would have one zodiac cruise and one landing, most likely with some gentoo penguins to round it off with our fellows who had been there for us the whole journey.



We got up and had breakfast at 7:30 as usual before the first zodiacs were ready to take us on the, not so surprising, zodiac cruises.
This was mostly to look at icebergs in Cierva Cove, but there were also several whales and of course some penguins around. I was a bit unlucky with the guide for this cruise as I got one that doesn't say much, but she was probably a bit under the weather with the cold half of us had been hit by as well.
One of the other boats actually had a humpback whale swimming towards them, going up for air, then going beneth their boat and then coming up on the other side for air again. Would have been cool, but that's not really something you can plan in advance. And for the record, the argentine navy was still following us....

The day's second stop was a Mikkelson Harbour where there were to everyones surprise gentoo penguins. I was the first one in the zodiacs and on the last boat back to the main ship. There really wasn't anything groundbreaking on this island compared to some of the other stops, but penguins are and will always be cool.
There was also one chinstrap penguin on this island, I suspect him to have been a spy from a close by colony to see it there were some good pebbles there, or the more probable reason - he was just lost.

Icebergs in our way at Spert Island

The surprise trip of the day was that we got a third trip with another zodiac cruise. A lot of people didn't care to go on this as they thought it would be similar to some of the other cruises we've been on - they were horribly mistaken.
We drove around these amazing cliffs, not too different from Ha Long Bay if you picture them as Antarctic, but with massive, rogue, icebergs floating around. Large openings in the mountains we could drive through, lots of birds, and the trip's first fur seal.
An great last trip on maybe the most amazing journey I've even been on.

Mikkelson Harbour and our last footsteps in Antarctica

Weddell seal at Mikkelson Harbour

The emergency lobster suits did as they were
supposed to, so we couldn't stand the heat for too long

We now had about two days and three nights before we would see land again, the first night most were quite tired after a long day. The first day was my birthday, so there was cake and later drinks in the bar. The next day was a bit more difficult, the sea did not behave a nicely as it had done the earlier sea-days and more than half of the passengers just stayed in their room, this included myself who was ok if I lay down on my bed, but not if I started walking around. We did however finally get to squeeze in the lobster-party I had been craving since the first day of travelling.
3rd day we arrived early in the morning, but were screwed by our flight out from Ushuaia being 5 hours delayed. For me this only meant less sleep in Buenos Aires as I had taken an extra day there just in case something like this would happen, as well as not having the time to check-in on my flight home the next day. For lots of others it meant that they missed their connection, but from what I've heard from them later it did work our the next day. Very annoying at the time, but in retroperspective not really anything more.