Killer whales and Leopard seals

Just when we thought that we had had our whale show, we went for a Zodiac cruise in Wilhelmina Bay in the Antarctic Peninsula.

We had Andy as our driver who was really good. The call came out for killer whales and it was a zodiac race across the bay to where they were. To our absolute delight we almost immediately saw 3 orcas swimming around and 'skyhopping', which is where they come straight up out of the water and look on the ice floes to see if there are any seals there that they can have for breakfast. They were swimming around curiously and even came under the zodiac and showed us their beautiful colours and their size. They were surfacing just near zodiacs and checking us out and deciding that we were not seals and then moving on.

We cruised some more, looking at icebergs and eventually got the call for more whales, so headed in that direction. They are totally awesome. We found a lone gentoo penguin sitting atop an iceberg, well out of the reach of the whales, but he was wary of us as we went by.

Then someone found a mother leopard seal and cub sleeping on an ice floe. These probably wouldn't be bothered by the whales unless they tried to get the cub. Otherwise the mother is too big for the whale to wrestle with. The cub was trying to get a feed from mum and it took ages for her to bother turning over so it could get to the teat.

Cruised some more found more whales and icebergs and finally ended with a zodiac race with Graham's boat back to the ship.

As if that was not enough, in the afternoon we had walked up a hill and played in the snow...oh and looked at penguins. On the way back in the zodiac we went on a detour via a glacier and found 2 minke whales. They didn’t want to play like the orcas though.