Humpback

Here's one of the whales in Wilhelmina Bay, cropped enough to make it obvious that it is a whale, and not some random rock jutting out of the water.

I've never had any luck spotting whales before this trip; if I've now transferred my bad luck to photographing them, I can live with that. I think we saw humpbacks every day once we were out of the Drake Passage, and the occasional minke and orca as well. I never got tired of them, even if it was  just a fin or a dark shadow in the water. One evening late in the trip I was in the lounge at the top of the ship before dinner when I saw a humpback in the water below. I called out “Whale!”, but no one heard me over the music and happy hour conversation, and I watched it for several minutes with my face pressed against the glass, feeling that it was my own private whale and we were sailing through the Antarctic evening together.

I meant to post this last night, but the laptop was sluggish and so was my brain. I made a dinner of nuts and olives and two glasses of good Chilean red wine up in the rooftop bar, where it was pleasantly breezy. It was my last night of vacation -- tonight I'm on a plane back to New York -- and I lingered for a couple of hours before going back to my room, watching El Show de Tom y Jerry, and falling asleep.