People and Penguins at Base Esperanza by Ella Derbyshire

We were on a Quark Explorers Cruise on the MV Professor Multanovskiy, and we were exploring the Antarctic Peninsula. It was a beautiful day a after an impressive storm at sea. We took shelter from the gale in Hope Harbor, and we were invited ashore when the weather cleared.

It was a great landing. Base Esperanza is a year-round base that is the home to several families with children. The base has family-friendly facilities not found on most Antarctic bases. There is a chapel, a community center and a school. The Post Office sells stamps, and mail sent from here got back to Alaska only a little later than I did.

The folks in the yellow jackets are all cruise passengers. Some of the passengers are in the foreground, and another bunch are coming up the hill from the landing. The guys in orange are folks who live at the base.

On the hill at the far right is a quartet of moulting Adelie Penguins. Even though this is very fresh snow, there are quite a few penguin footprints around the birds. They are dressed in black and white. You will notice that they are looking a bit scruffy, but when their feathers return, they will be wearing traditional sleek formal attire. Then they'll waste no time getting back into the water. See if you can find them without using the snapshot.

The 37 frames of this panorama were captured with a Nikon D80 and stitched with Autopano Pro.

We cruised the Southern Ocean for 3 weeks, and I saw a lot of exotic places. You can see them all in other panoramas on this gigapan.org website.