We are on a high and the bar is buzzing. After an absolutely brilliant day we are on the move again. It’s around 8pm and Leah and I have finished dinner and have settled into the bar, to work on our photos and have a chat. Our eyes however are drawn to the kaleidoscope of colours and patterns that flash by the glass windows. We are cruising through Antarctic Sound and Antarctica is putting on a fabulous show for us tonight!
Listen..can you hear it? Close your eyes….can you imagine it? My words and pictures will not do this incredible landscape justice, but let me give you a taste for this vast expanse of Southern Ocean. 
There’s the Adele penguins socialising on the ice flow before they skate off on their bellies and drop off on to the freezing water. 
I love to watch them swimming in unison. Someone squeals in delight as a whole group breaks the surface. 
There’s the occasional seal, sunbathing on an ice flow, fast asleep, well insulated against the frigid summers of Antarctic. We recall the day we saw the leopard seal from these very same windows and the excitement it caused at the bar!
The seals strike me as sluggish creatures that spend long hours sleeping, making disgusting noises and if male, fighting for territory while on land. Yet, they are so graceful in the water and a treat to watch! 
There’s the icebergs themselves that float by with no sound. If you were in your cabin, you could completely miss this amazing landscape go by. Each berg is unique in shape and colouration, and incredibly beautiful to look at. These pieces have broken off from the Antarctic ice shelf itself and protrude about 30m into the air but about 300m of each berg is hidden under water. If you are lucky, you might even catch the occasional plop, as a piece of ice breaks off into the water. 
As the sun sets, the colours of this landscape change and soft pinks mix in with the shades of blue, grey and white, adding a beautiful touch to this stupendous picture. 
The waters are so calm, we can’t believe we are in Antarctica. The night sky never seems to darken in these long summer nights that stretch endlessly and merge effortlessly into an Antarctic morning. I love the brash ice that just sits on the surface of the water and adds a beautiful horizontal pattern from which the icebergs seem to emerge. 
We stay awake till past midnight, but then we drag ourselves to bed as we have to be up for another landing the next day. It was a magic ending to a perfect day, watching and listening to the Antarctic Sound!
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
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