When rolling through Drakes Passage, the trick is to shuffle. You shuffle when you walk, shuffle when you talk and even shuffle when you pray. Even when you think it starts to shuffle. The view is amazing. Blue, blue and nothing but blue: hazy blue skies and angry blue waves. Even the white foam has this electric-blue tinge to it. I tried to take a few photos of it… but you can’t quite catch the sea. Unfortunately stomachs don’t have the same problem and a couple of guys are lying in their bunks… but for the most part it's a good crossing. I hear that we might run into a little storm later on.

It’s slowly starting to come together in our heads, Antarctica. Can’t tell if it's the shuffling or what, but things are actually starting to feel upside down. The continent’s kind of a hard thing to get a mental picture of, I’d never really thought of it too much before. I mean when you think of South America or Australia or Asia, so many different things come up: the Amazon and the Himalayas, the lion and the kangaroo, Marco Polo and Genghis Khan. With Antarctica you get something different. Antarctica gives you this feeling that it could have been all of this. I mean it’s a real continent, fifth largest in the world. It could have been full of little villages nestled in valleys by trickling streams. It could have had its Kilimanjaro staring across the wind chasing bison across the prairie. It could have had a giant river slowly making its way through giant redwood forests teaming with slithering Anacondas. Instead it’s chilling there alone and forgotten at the bottom (or top) of the world; its gigantic shield of ice pierced here and there by nameless peaks, a few lonely   penguins exploring the petrified remains of an ancient tree trunk.

On the ship… a few lectures on birds, a few chats about Antarctica protocol and a few videos of the icy continent. Nothing much on sustainability or CO2 today, but I think with all this tossing and turning it might not be the best time for that. I saw one today of Ernest Shackleton’s expedition, we’ll be getting more of his story as time passes. You should read up on his expedition though. Also read up on Robert Swan’s expedition. It’s quite an interesting read.

So why do these people go to this banished part of the world? You should see some of these pictures. Three guys on skis each tied to a sled. Staring up at this gigantic frozen wave of ice. You should see pictures of Mount Erebrus. It’s so huge. Makes you feel really small. I asked Robert, “Why did you do it?” Why did he spend almost 10 years of his life to go to the South Pole? He said something about it about how he’s not an explorer, how he just happened to have this dream as a kid… saw some movie somewhere. I’ll have to go there and check it out for myself.

Ok I think this will get sent to you guys from the ship. Next one should be from Antarctica.