Bernadette King Turner

2:30 in the morning in Antarctica. Something, but I don’t know what woke me at 2:30 in the morning, I looked out my cabin window and this is what I saw!! I flew out of bed, threw my jacket and hat over top of my pj’s, jumped into my ugg boots, grabbed my camera and bolted for the deck; there I spent the next two hours ‘shell-shocked’, ‘dumb-struck’ & in total wonder of what I was actually standing in the midst of!

“Travelling — it leaves you speechless, then it turns you into a storyteller.”
Ibn Battuta

While all others were snoring in their cabins I and two others were snapping a ‘million’ pics of the most amazing colours and dimensions.
For an unknown surreal reason, we thought that we, during those most silent moments were the only people on planet earth – as if we were ‘ the last man standing‘!!??
The others who also ventured out and shared this amazing unfolding scene were the Plancius ship First Officer and Bruce the Plancius photographer.

A fallen frozen angel floated by our ship, for a moment her head tilted and her toes wiggled, then she just silently floated next to our ship Plancius,
she was intently quiet, I was sure I could actually hear the mist from her breath on the near-to-frozen water that she was floating on.
(Thanks Forrest Gump) … Life is like a box of chocolates – full of surprises – we just never know what will happen next…

The day turned into night, and then the night turned into day!!… I could not believe I was looking at the loveliest pink sea and mountains of the Antarctica;
by day all was white with black rocks, by night all was pink with stunning blues…

…and then the blues turned into green…

Alone, I walked around the deck, it seemed strange to wander with no one watching nor anyone to hear me in case I slipped and quietly dropped into the still waters,
such a strange feeling to know that I was comfortably alone with only a rather large chunk of a metal ship and something super amazing that we call Antarctica!!