Our only landing today was inside the caldera of a dormant volcano. The location was a place called Deception Island, which last erupted in 1970. The caldera is actually open to the ocean, and thus filled with frigid water. There’s a rumor that heat from the volcanic substrate heats the water and earth there, but no evidence of that was found today.

After a morning exploration of a derelict whaling station which is now a historical landmark, a dozen or so hardy souls (yours truly definitely not among them), braved a polar plunge into waters right around freezing temperature.

I have compiled 14 photos into a short 30 second slide show video with suitable music. The guy leaping into the water during the middle of the slide show is our fellow blogger Andrew Evans (@bus2antarctica on Twitter). The slide show is below:

Update – February 18, 2010: I have been informed by Abby, one of the participants in the plunge, that the bearded fellow is actually Justin, another passenger on the ship who looks a lot like Andrew (@bus2antarctica). Sorry about the confusion!

 

Tags: Andrew Evans, Antarctica, Deception Island, frigid, National Geographic Explorer, polar plunge, Port Foster, Whaler's Bay

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Cruises, Potpourri, Tours, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.