Happy new year!

A (bad) phone photo of one of the jumbotrons set up for viewing Zohran Mamdani's inauguration as New York's mayor yesterday. We had tickets for the viewing party, but this was taken from the wrong side of the barricades because the bitter cold and high winds made the idea of standing in a crowd for several hours unappealing, much as I like Mamdani.

Instead we walked a few blocks downtown to the Fraunces Tavern, which has been in business there since 1762, and was a favorite hangout for Washington, Hamilton, and Burr, among others. And which serves a scrumptious grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup that made up for missing the speeches.

Leaving Cierva Cove

Bringing the kayaks back to the ship as we prepared to set sail.

It's several hours till midnight, but I can already hear the helicopters flying over Times Square a few blocks away. I usually manage to sleep through the cheers greeting the ball drop and hope to do it again.

I think I speak for many people when I say that 2025 sucked in so many ways that I'll be very glad to see it in the rear view mirror. But it helps to remember that it wasn't all terrible, that I saw so much beauty along the way.

Two views

Some amazing blues and greens. I couldn't decide which view I liked better, close up or more perspective (with more ice) so I'm posting both.

And still more color

I'm guessing the green here is lichen, rather than iron in the glacier water, but I could most definitely be wrong.

And more color

I have no idea what made this ice look this way (iron oxides are supposed to give glaciers and icebergs a greenish cast, so maybe?) But it's beautiful.

And a little color

Those deep blues always look tropical to me, but that's marine ice, which forms underneath ice shelves and is highly compressed, so nothing remotely tropical about it. That color comes from the way the light refracts on the dense ice.

The big(ger) picture

All of this zeroing in on the wildlife was of course taking place surrounded by towering mountains and huge icebergs. Sometimes I had to force myself to quit watching the penguins and just look around me.

I am fairly confident I did notice the whale

But if you look closely, there is another porpoising penguin in the background.

Another OMG I missed this!

I had previously posted a video showing one of the gentoos flying out of the water and landing on the rocks. (You get some idea of how crazy fast they can move through the water by the amount of momentum they have when they're leaving it.)

This picture captures two penguins in midair, about to land. I missed it at first—oh look, more penguins—but the water trail caught my eye and I realized what I was looking at.

And some gentoos too

I've already posted many pictures of the mobs of gentoos along the shoreline in Cierva Cove, but this pair were hanging out by themselves on an ice floe.

This landscape of unbroken ice and snow is more like what most people imagine Antarctica looks like, but there's really less snow than you'd think in the summer (and less every year.)

And still more chinstraps

There weren't as many chinstraps as there were gentoos in Cierva Cove, and we didn't get as close to them. This picture brings it all back, and I love the wild water with the bergy bits floating in it.

More chinstraps