back from the Polar Circle

Just returned from another dive trip along the Peninsula. One leopard seal on the very first check dive, none for the rest of the trip. Several opportunities to snorkel and dive with Crabeater and Weddell seals, while fur seals could not be bothered. One exteemely curious minke at Cuverville, would not let us go and even chased after the zodiac...

A good bunch of people. Russians, Dutch, Swiss, German, Mexican and American with very different backgrounds and expectations, but all okay in the water and even nicer in the bar afterwards... some good UW photographers among them, and they even managed to take "one or two good ones"... which is all you can ever hope for as dive guide, anyway.

One diving passenger had been taking up scuba diving, dry suit diving, buying tons of equipment and training in a thick neoprene suit in Florida (!!!) just to be able to join this trip. Talk about commitment... but the person was "distantly related to Amundsen" so there you go.

The mexicans had been training in a volcanic crater lake at 4000m a.s.l. (Lake Tacho/Taho...?)to gain cold water experience for this while the Russians had even cut holes into the ice-covered Dnjepr and had been hanging on for dear life in the current on taut lines just to get some "under-ice experience".

As always, exchange between diving and landing pax. and guiding was mostly limited to mealtimes, where the Russians often dominated the conversation level ("Russian Tradition"!) but everybody else still seemed to enjoy themselves a lot.

Tonight we are heading out with another trip, again with divers, and this time they are Austrian, Dutch, and Russian again. Let´s see how it goes (back in 10 days).