(Again, click on the links for the pics. I was a little camera happy in the Great White South.)

February 21, 2005. An amazing day. Incredible. Stupendous. Near miraculous.

Perfect.

Under blue skies, in a snowy harbor filled with tiny icebergs in clear, blue water, surrounded by crashing glaciers and brilliant, white peaks, I saw a beautiful gentoo penguin walk over to me, bend over, and shit loudly and violently onto another penguin’s head. The offended penguin that until that moment had been napping peacefully, jumped up, shook its sullied noggin and looked around confused as to just how and why he was suddenly covered in penguin crap.

Lord, It was beautiful.

On a side note, I watched the sun rise yellow over the snow-covered peaks surrounding us that morning, and watched as bright blue icebergs bobbed in the gray water. I rode out in the zodiac on a cold and snowy morning to see the incredible morning light play off a icy beach of Cuverville Island filled with flocks of cackling gentoo penguins and still more barking fur seals. As the wind died down, I motored through spectacularly sculpted icebergs underneath dramatic gray skies while a leopard seal slipped serpentine through the blue-green waters, skulking around the boat from berg to berg to berg. I saw an immaculately textured iceberg, ribbed and etched through generations, with four towers reaching thirty, forty feet overhead, and a protected, icy blue lagoon of melted water at it’s center. I hiked to the top of a snow-covered hillside and watched glaciers calving into crystal clear water while penguins and seals slept in the warm summer sunshine. I saw five rare beak-nose whales surface in the harbor and heard them breathe while I sat atop a snowy mountaintop in the bright, warm afternoon sunshine of a near windless day. I watched a positively giant, fifteen-foot leopard seal nap in the sun on a floating iceberg in Neko Harbor , occasionally glancing over at our zodiac with his frightening, Cheshire cat smile. I had a barbeque in a glassy harbor mirroring the surrounding mountains, it’s cold, calm water filled with tiny icebergs, while seals and penguins porpoised through the blue water around us. I sat in a zodiac while a curious, thirty-foot minke whale followed us around a harbor, popping up all around us for thirty minutes, including spyhopping up to check us out just six feet away from our bow. I watched the sun set from our observation deck painting all the mountains around us in pastel. I took more than five hundred photos today and fell into a rare, comfortable sleep while we remained anchored in calm water in the aptly named Paradise Harbor . It was, by any standard, a perfect Antarctic day.

Perfect.

But goddamn it, if I didn’t see a penguin shit on another penguin’s head.