Our crossing of the Drake Passage was pretty mild although a few people on the ship had trouble with motion sickness.  They gave out motion sickness medication for free.  We are now done with the rough water and the ride is much smoother.  We are told that we are coming into the South Shetland Islands and should start seeing ocean birds, whales and land.  I meet quite a few people I haven’t seen before – they were hiding out in their rooms with motion sickness.  Most people are out on the decks looking for the first signs of Antarctica.  I’ve spent many hours on the boat now eating and napping.  I have a cold so there is not much energy for anything else.  The cold brisk air feels so good to my sinuses. There are smallish white birds doing laps around the ship.  They fly in a pack of 4 or 6 and come in from the starboard side, fly around in front of us in formation and then fly off to the port side.  There are other large birds that fly by from time to time, petrels and albatross, checking out the ship.  Then we see what looks like jumping fish.  When we get a little closer, you realize it’s not jumping fish, but penguins.  They are fast, graceful swimmers.  They jump like tiny dolphin.  They look so much smaller than I expected.  We started seeing whales too, mostly humpback whales.  The first few were exciting and you tried to get a photo or video of them, but my camera was never quite in sync with the whales.  Just when you thought, darn, I missed it, there was another.  If you looked off in the distance you saw 6-10 more.  So many whales and penguins.  I stopped trying to photograph them (it’ll just look like a dark spot on a picture) and just enjoyed watching life jump in and out of the ocean waves.  I enjoyed watching the white birds circle the ship.  Then someone said they saw the first iceberg.  I looked off in the distance where they pointed.  All I see is a random white wave every now and then.  Then I look at the actual horizon line.  It is a fuzzy white line out in the distance.  I notice that there was one spot where the white line looked like a jagged tooth sticking up sharply instead of being a bit fuzzy.  It was very white.  First iceberg!  It looked hours away so I turned my attention back to birds and whales.  About 20 minutes later I can see the iceberg.  It feels official that we are in Antarctica now.  A little bit later I could see dark shapes on the horizon.  That seemed odd.  I don’t think they are dirty icebergs.  Oh, duh, land.  There was mist around the land forms.  It was overcast above them.  It appeared that the land was being born from the mist.  Dark shapes would appear out of the mist and then become more detailed as we got closer.  Soon islands came into view.  We have arrived to the South Shetland Islands.