Today our morning landing is to Pendulum Cove of Deception Island.  I didn’t know there was going to be a polar plunge.  Everyone else on the ship seems to know this was going to happen.  I was wondering how I didn’t read about it or did our travel agent leave out some information?  I had brought a bathing suit since our trip went through Miami and Buenos Aries so I was prepared.  I still felt unprepared.  It would be a short landing in the morning since the point of the landing was to do the polar plunge.  This is the type of activity that has never interested me.  I have never heard “polar plunge” and thought “I want to do that” or “that sounds fun”.  Bungee jumping is the other activity that comes to mind that I just don’t get why anyone would want to do it or how it could appear fun.  They asked who was interested in doing it so they had an idea how many towels to bring and how many zodiacs to have on standby for bringing people back to the ship.  It looked like almost everyone on the ship raised their hands.  The rationalization begins.  If I do this in Antarctica, I never have to do it again.  Who can try to goad you into doing a polar plunge when you can say, “well, I did it in Antarctica and I don’t need to do it again”?  Is it actually a polar plunge if you are not near one of the poles?  Maybe it would be fun.  It can’t actually be that cold – it’s warmer in summer in Antarctica than it is in Granby in winter.  Deception Island is a volcano, if it’s low tide, the first few feet of water is warmer due to heat coming from the island.  I have a bathing suit.  I’m 50 and I’m all about experiencing what I can.  Just standing on the ship before everyone went to their rooms to change clothing was tiring. Hearing everyone talk about it, the combination of fear, excitement and bravado was palpable.  Some girls were trying feverishly to guilt each other into it.  Some of the younger men were energetically showing off their testosterone levels.  As the zodiac was getting close to the island you could see the steam coming off the water.  The weather was overcast and breezy when we arrived at the beach.  The beach and the peaks around us were all a deep black color.  There are no plants and only a patch of snow.  The clouds hang low just above us so the tops of the peaks are missing.  It was quite ominous.  Other than the breeze, it seemed quite warm to me.  This will be easy if it stays this warm.  The rocky beach was cold on the feet, but it didn’t hurt the way I’ve experienced at home when your feet hit bare ground in the winter.  Still, I had no desire to hang out in the cold water for long.  The water was almost warm when you first walked in and I wondered for a split second if we had been duped and it would be more like a hot spring visit than a polar plunge.  Then the water got much colder, not as cold as I expected, but nowhere on the scale of warm.  I’ve been in cold mountain lakes where your breath is gone because the temperature actually compresses your lungs.  I didn’t experience that here.  Once it got deep enough to dip all the way in and it was cold, I dipped in and then turned to walk very very quickly out.  It wasn’t as cold as I expected, but there was no reason to hang out and splash around.  I expected it to feel warm outside for a while after as that is usually the experience I’ve had with coming out of the water into cold air.  It felt warm long enough to get clothes back on and then it didn’t feel cold at all.  The ride back to the ship was easy, my toes and finger tips were a bit cold, but my body was not.  I think about other places I could do the polar plunge.  I could do it in Grand Lake, CO where they have to drill a hole in the ice to get to the water.  The air temperature is probably around 0 degrees F and the water barely 33 degrees.  That sounds way worse than our polar plunge in Antarctica.  Still, if anyone tries to convince me to do a polar plunge, I can truthfully say I’ve done it in Antarctica and don’t need to do another.