Someone must have turned Horseshoe Island upside down, because by the time we got there our luck with the weather had run out. The wind was 57 knots (65 mph), precluding a Zodiac landing. Instead, we cruised along Bourgeois Fjord, which is utterly gorgeous.

More than 50 years ago, Donovan, the great Scottish singer/songwriter/unreconstructed hippie sang “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.” I now know what he meant. As the sun darted between the clouds, there was a magical dance of light and darkness, where mountains by turn faded to black or leapt into halo-like light.

As the day continued and the clouds lowered, glaciers blended directly into the clouds so that the boundary between land and air was indeterminate. It seemed – and this was before my daily Scotch, mind you – like the sky was flowing between the mountains into the water.
By mid-afternoon, the captain maneuvered toward Pourquoi Pas Island with admirable but misplaced hopes of anchoring near a penguin rookery. The weather explained why not; once again the wind intensified and the water grew angry. Poor us: instead of venturing into the wind, rain, and swell, we remained in the observation dome, sipped our drinks, ate some sweets, and gawked at humpback whales swimming between the ice bergs. (As for the penguin rookery, binoculars divulged dozens of black dots that the expedition staff swore were Adelie penguins. I choose to believe them.)
Sounds amazing!