WOW! The first day of the new millennium and here we are off on a big adventure to Antarctica! None of us got much sleep last night. After celebrating New Millennium's Eve, we managed to catch 2 hours sleep before arriving at Tullamarine (Melbourne Airport) at 6am. I tell you what - this Golden Wing Lounge setup is pretty good. It made our wait for the plane very pleasant indeed with plenty of time to get excited... Guess what movie they were showing on the plane! TOY STORY 2!! Yippee. There was even a penguin just like me in it. And of course all the characters that my favorite Linux distribution (Debian) is named after. What a great start to the trip! Talk about cold! Surely Antarctica won't be any colder than Invercargill, right on the Southern tip of New Zealand. Cath and Geoff got out the polar fleeces pretty quick smart. Our hotel is great - I have a whole bed to myself. Well after a day mooching around Invercargill, the big DAY 1 of our expedition dawned. It didn't start off very well for me - nearly being captured and eaten by this huge lizard outside the visitors centre and museum in Queens Park. Luckily Geoff and Cath rescued me and we had a good look through the exhibitions before heading off to the ship. Big excitement - our first sighting of the ship which was to be our home for the next 30 days. The Academik Shokalskiy is hardly your luxury cruise liner but it seems very livable. It's a lot smaller than we expected - basically 3 decks of cabins, with a dining room, lounge/bar, hospital and lecture room. So excited to be here! All right, I know this is a bit corny....but I just HAD to do 'King of the World' on the bow of the ship. Come on guys, don't I look just a TINY bit like Leonardo...? And yes, I know, a sunset might have set a better scene than total fog! Oh boy! Exhaustion has set in from that fresh sea air! But do you think it is even possible to get any sleep?? The ship was rocking and pitching so much that things were flying off the desk and the chair was walking around the room. Geoff didn't really fit into his bunk and after a few hours of doing 'headstands' he thought he'd try the couch (which was oriented in the other direction). We only got rolled off twice! Hey, these aren't penguins (I can't wait to meet THEM) but these beautiful royal albatross are the next best thing I guess. They are really cool birds. We watched them for ages while Rodney (our expedition leader) was chumming at the back of the ship. Yay - land! Geoff was glad to be on firm soil again. I was just looking forward to seeing some wildlife (ok, I admit, specifically penguins). Enderby Island is part of the Auckland Island group of sub-antarctic islands. In the background here you can see the beach which is littered with hooker sealions. Little did we know at the start of the day that we would spend the whole day dodging them and avoiding being chased! Mmmm, interesting vegetation here on Enderby. Oh, penguins, penguins....where are you? Come out and meet me! Do you look like me I wonder? We wandered around some very impressive cliffs and saw some stunning scenery on our walk around the island. Did Rodney say it would only take 2 hours? Mmmmm, I think he forgets my legs are pretty short! Aaarrrgh, angry looking sealion coming at us! Quick, move away slowly and pretend not to look scared. Now that's more like it! I've been dying to meet some of these pengoons (my pet name for them). These little yellow-eyed penguins are very shy so they wouldn't come over and chat to us. It was great to watch them from a distance though, as we observed the 5 metre rule. Moving right along...here we are cruising into Carnley Harbour in the Auckland Islands. No trees to be seen here. Some people are going on a hike up to the top to see royal albatross nesting. I think I'll take the easier zodiac cruise option instead! OK, I'm ready!! Come on guys, I'm really keen to get going here...anybody else coming with me? Yay - finally! Here we are heading off on a leisurely cruise around the harbour - or so we thought! Rodney ended up taking us through the Victoria passage which was pretty rough, and we had a nice rocky rolling time trying not to fall out of the boat - or throw up! We were lucky it wasn't raining though, apparently it does so most days of the year here.