Greetings from Antarctica!!!

Please forgive the formatting, this post was uploaded at Port Lockroy on Wienke Island in Antarctica. Yes, you read that correctly – Antarctica!

While not technically a “selfie”, this is a pic of me at Half Moon Island, Antarctica, with some chinstrap penguins. That oh-so-stylish jacket I’m wearing is made of some magical wind-stopping warmth, and I saved $100 by getting it in pink rather than the super pretty blue/teal color. #Priorities.

Wait a second – how/why are you in Antarctica???

Now that I’ve posted my proof of life photo, allow me to explain myself: for the past week, I’ve had the privilege to cruise around Antarctica in the ship Le Lyrial with my family. Why Antarctica? Because my family and I are huge travel buffs, and by visiting Antarctica, we’d officially visited all 7 continents! (Or all 6, or all 5, depending on where you learned how many continents there are – not that anyone is “wrong” – we’ve discovered this is a highly cultural thing).
So… what is there to do in Antarctica…?
Before I left, people always asked “what are you going to do there?” I joked that I would check in on Facebook. Well, I did do that. But what I actually spent most of my time doing was honing my photography skills. I loaded up on massive amounts of entertainment on my computer before departing (no Netflix! The horror!!!), but I’ve actually watched very little of it (Ok, one evening I binge-watched the episodes of Younger that I’d previously downloaded – that show is incredibly entertaining). Plus, it turned out that the TVs in our staterooms have a bunch of movies and TV channels. There’s even Internet on our ship, though it’s very slow and out of courtesy I’ve created super low resolution versions of my photos to upload.
Ok, cool, now show us the photos!!!
Sure thing – except there’s very little bandwidth here and all I could manage was the one photo.

When I’m back somewhere that has unlimited bandwidth I’ll post these, and in high-res! For now, the captions will provide you with a glimpse into what I have in store for you!

Penguins – posing for their next album cover, #Obvi.

This seal was a total show off – that and I discovered the 60 frames per second mode on the Nikon AW1 I was using, so I held down that shutter button for dear life and just hoped the seal would do something worth photographing.

This spot is well-known as being one of the most photographed in Antarctica – you can see why, even at low-resolution.

#PenguinPhotobomb – yessssssss!

Thinking about visiting Antarctica? Do it! It is hands-down the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to, and it really doesn’t get any better than hanging out with penguins.

If you’re going to Antarctica, read this:
Before I sign off, a couple pieces of advice for folks travelling to Antarctica:

Don’t skim on digital memory – they make 2 Terabyte flash cards for your camera. Buy one. Or bring multiple back-up harddrives. I went to Antarctica with 1 TB completely free for backing up my photos too and I burned through it pretty quick.

Only buy a camera with a viewfinder and that is waterproof. I cannot stress this enough. If your camera isn’t waterproof, you won’t have it handy to use when penguins swim up alongside you on a Zodiak ride. And without a viewfinder, it’s really tough to take photos during excursions due to the serious strength of the sun.

Finally, bring LAYERS – we had multiple days in the 30’s. I think it even hit 40-something degrees farenheit during our time here. It was HOT, all things considered.