Mid morning our vessel anchored in Cierva Cove within sight of the Argentine Antarctic Base called Primavera (the last photo in the first group below). The cove is surrounded by glaciated mountains and the cove itself was crowded with floating ice of various sizes. We spent a couple of hours touring around the bay in Zodiacs getting a firsthand look at all that ice.

During our "iceberg tour", our zodiac pilot and guide talked a little about the size of icebergs and mentioned an enormous example (which we later looked up on google). Back in 2000 a chunk of ice broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf to form an iceberg labelled B15, it was 295km (180miles) long and 37km (23 miles) wide. It is/was the biggest iceberg ever observed.

After lunch, and a bit more cruising by the ship, we arrived at a place called Portal Point where we went ashore; our first footsteps on the Antarctic Continent. Unfortunately the weather was bad, with snow and low cloud so the photos of that excursion are not great.