Merry Christmas from Port Foster!

Entrance to Port Foster

Merry Christmas from Port Foster!!  Port Foster is the interior body of water of Deception Island.  There is only one narrow passage that allows ships to sail into the interior, and it can easily be missed if not paying attention.  Did I mention that Deception Island is the caldera of an active volcano, and we are currently sailing in it?  The last eruption was in 1970.  In the early 1900s lots of whaling took place here, but that is no longer the case.  We will doing a landing this afternoon at Whaler's Bay which was the center of activity decades ago.

Old Whaling Station

Because we're in an active volcano, we can see steam rising from the shoreline. We're told that when we do our landing, we can stick our hand in the black beach sand and feel the warmth.  We're approaching lunchtime, and a morning activity was to take a polar plunge which of course, we had to do.  Where else can we take a plunge into an active volcano?  The water may have been incrementally warmer here, but it was still FREEZING Antarctic water.  The staff took pictures, so maybe I'll have one to post later, but we're off to lunch before our afternoon landing.