Hello, this is your captain speaking…

Please fasten your seatbelts

as we prepare for our descent

into the last of our Antarctic blog posts.

Please enjoy your penguins and seals as after this we will be sailing into warmer Summerhood Island weather.

We have enjoyed our stint as your tour guides.

 Feel free to contact us with requests for autographs or personalized pictures.  

And we thank you for your interest.

After South Georgia, we had two days at sea filled with lectures on Penguins, who governs Antarctica and how do we do science there, an amazing tour of the bridge,

and lectures on the do's and don'ts to follow when actually setting foot on the Antarctic continent.  After years of various countries on various bases crapping up a huge area around them with waste there are finally rules in place to try and take care of what's left of this pristine continent.

Our first stop is Deception Bay.  After a precarious threading through narrow

channels,

the captain brings us into a harbor surrounded by a volcanic crater.

We were only on the island about an hour, but in that time this frozen area thawed into a running stream.

Next up was Pendulum Bay, home of the famous geothermal spring.  If we were brave enough, they said, we could swim.  Swim.  In Antarctica.  I had visions of a lovely deep thermal hot tub pool.

nina getting ready to undress

Not quite.  But I did it anyway, and I have a certificate to prove how stupid I am.

yes, it was warm. but only for about 6 feet from the shore. then the chill of the air and ocean overcame the heat from the sand. you can't see it in these photos but there was ice floating in the water about ten feet out from us. 

And then we're done with islands, and actually setting foot on the coast.  Chinstrap

and Adelie penguins,

you lookin' at me?

some serious snow climbing

up to see rookeries

yes, that's all penguin poop.

and not so serious snow sliding back down.

nina follows our new tour guide

And the zodiac trip around all of the icebergs and ice shelves,

touching an iceberg

threading our way through

complete with wildlife

leopard seal

waddel  seal

one lonely chinstrap catches a ride

and a champagne toast.

This trip was not on my bucket list.  It was my bucket list.  And it was everything I had imagined

and so much more.

Apparently you have to . . .

Actually post a blog post. Just because you send something to a group of people on Facebook, and then make up a blog, this does not mean it automatically appears. You still have to do the actual posting. Or it just sits there.  Who knew?

Okay ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and any assorted animals that know how to type,

(I have trouble reading animal handwriting) it’s time for a contest.  We haven’t had a contest in quite a while, and the exciting part about this one is that although you might have to do a bit more work than just think up the name of an island, there are many more chances to win.

Here’s how it works: you send me the names and addresses or emails of at least three elementary or middle school librarians

or the children’s librarians at your local library.  

I put your name in the hat

for chance to win an autographed, personalized copy of Coyote Summer. 

Every time I get ten entries I’ll have a drawing.  So you have a one in ten chance of winning.  When I get to ten I will start over again but your name will still be in the hat if you didn’t win the first time.  So you have another chance when I hit twenty entries.  And of course if you want to send me three more names I’ll enter you again.  That can really ramp up your chances of winning.

Of course you can win my undying love and affection by sending me the name of a librarian or middle school teacher that you know personally, and allow me to contact them using your name.  It doesn’t matter if any of the leads pan out or not, you still get entered in the drawing.

So get started, people!  Get out those online phone books.  Get out those paper phone books, if you still have one of those. 

Call up your child’s school and asked who buys the books.

This is either called personalized marketing,

using your friends and relatives,

or pandering to me so I will stop annoying you. 

 Or all three. Whatever works.

All it takes . . .

Is a pronouncement on the blog, it seems.
Yesterday I published a blog that bemoaned ever seeing my first Summerhood Island book in print.
Last night my publisher wrote to tell me the first copies had arrived on his doorstep.

Coyote Summer. A 'tween adventure novel.

Order from your local bookstore.

Or if you want a signed and personalized copy, order from me. www.margosolod.com

Or show up Saturday in Charlottesville at 10 a.m. at the Brandylane table in the Omni. It's the VA festival of the book. 

And mine is finally here!

 Happy first day of spring and Margo Book Day.

And here I was . . .

Just about to excitedly interrupt our Antarctic journey 

with news of the actual final arrival of my new book, Coyote Summer, only six months behind the projected publication date! How excited would I have been? 

But sadly, not. More delays, this time with the cover proof. Will it be ready in time for my 10 a.m. signing slot at the VA festival of the book at the Omni March 22? 
(How's that for a clever plug? Bet you hardly noticed I slid it in there).

Who knows. I'm not taking odds at this point. So instead, you get part 3 of (mercifully) only 4 -
ANTARCTICA, THE JOURNEY CONTINUES (insert appropriate music here).
After more whale sightings off Shag Rocks, we hit (not literally) South Georgia Island. Shackelton's grave.  Battling elephant seals. The 5K death march.
This one has it all.

margo shackelton, setting foot on south georgia.

elephant seals wallowing in their own- well you get the idea. they molt not only fur but skin, rubbing it off while soothing their itchiness in the goo. ugh. and the smell. makes the penguins look good.

Somebody thought it would be a good idea to introduce reindeer onto South Georgia as a supplemental food source. Then somebody else thought, hmmm... not so much. Kind of like rabbits in Australia. Seemed like a good idea at the time. As we were arriving they were exterminating the last of the herds.  These other bones are whale bones, left over from  South Georgia's glory days as a whaling station.

one of many old boats abandoned when the station shut down.

Something happened here and the pictures are all over the place. The one below should be third, but it won't stay there.  Oh, well.

harder than it looked at first.

theses picture insist on being here, even though they should be below. i give up

this is ridiculous. the pictures won't stay in order. fine. make up your ow story. this is the top of the first pass, when we saw what was ahead.

But the death march. Yes. So called because it was. Or very hard anyway. They dropped us off on one side of the island and we had to march over the mountain through a pass to the whaling station on the other side. The boat moved after dropping us off. No going back.

nina captures the first descent for posterity. or posterior.

looking back from the (first) top at the harbor.

off we go, dodging angry fur seals this, of course, should be the first picture.

we go up there?

Eventually we reach the top, having shed most of our layers. I am showing off my walking sticks with Chukgrips, without which I would not have made it. 

from now on the pics are in order. don't ask why.

If you get to the top you get to throw a stone on the cairn. I doubt Shackelton and his men started this.

Down we go.

An old water wheel, used to generate power for one of the whaling stations.We saw many of these abandoned structures.

Finally, we spot the bay!

Never have I been so happy to see the ship.

We wander among the beached ships rusting into the sand-

and the old whaling artifacts scattered about where they were left- (ok, maybe some were carefully placed by the museum staff. I didn't ask.)

inside the museum, 

Shackelton's actual tent and equipment.

outside, a toast at his grave, as well as the graves of other explorers and whalers.

We drank a toast of Jamison's whiskey (I don't know if that was Shakelton's favorite, or simply that Bob, who was doing all the toasts and telling the stories at least 10 times, decided to have his own favorite tipple. Wouldn't surprise me a bit.) 

A fitting end to an adventurous day.