As the boat starts to pitch and roll, the ground is never quite where you expect it to be and body pinball is a given. Bouncing from one surface to another - in complete control at all times of course :) - makes for a good workout.
I've found that there are a few ways you can deal with the movement of the ship, which can be summarised in two words: fight and dance. You can choose. Some of the best times I've had on the moving ship so far have been at night when they turn the music up at the bar and everyone starts dancing. When you're shaking your body around with your eyes closed, the erratic motion of the world around you doesn't come as such a surprise. And you can apply this same mentality to movement during the day. Move with the ship, lean into it, allow it to lead. I've tried the other way. It's way less fun.
Of course, neither of these approaches helps much with seasickness. But the drugs really do. Most of them make you drowsy too, which is mildly amusing when you're trying to tick names off a checklist or locate a size 5 boot in the storeroom. There's one drug that really gets me going: it kind of gives you tunnel vision, makes it difficult to judge distances and can even make one or both of your pupils dilate. Quite an amusing experience. But not one you want to repeat too often. I don't like being dosed up on these things two or three days out of every ten, but for now, drugs beat seasickness.
You might think moving ships and seasickness have been the major feature of the past 25 days or so. They really haven't. But it's easier to talk about seasickness than the soul-stirring silence of tabular icebergs, the big flat-topped ones borne of ice shelves distant and unfathomable, the ones that go for kilometres. They sail the wind-whistle seas unguided, unburdened, like so many abandoned cities, and our ship glides past as the sun sinks low, mauve, pink on the horizon so softly, softly. The mountains feel like a painting an arm's length away.
It's easier to talk about seasickness than the glistening hauled-out seals and teal icebergs and snow algae and colonies of penguins that choose to nest on the most desolate of landscapes - the highest points on the rockiest outcrops - to be tormented by the relentless Antarctic wind and snow.
These tiny birds, so easy to diminish, so easy to cherish for their cute waddle and nonchalant stumbles and adorable tummy slides down snow slopes. They can be seen as ungainly on land, but they are fist-clenching head-shaking-in-wonder howl-to-the-sky kind of beings. They defend their young with ferocity. No, even the young defend themselves and one another against the skuas that fly overhead, looking for vulnerable chicks. They squawk and haw and huddle and spread their wings, routinely turning large predators away.
I love watching penguins do their thing on land. But I've discovered that there are few things I like more on earth than watching penguins swim.
They approach the water with a caution that belies their skill, hesitating sometimes for minutes, dipping their feet into the water, checking for seals and other predators. Waiting for someone else to jump in first. Sometimes they look at one another as if to say:
'So who's it gonna be? You? Or me?'
'Well, I went first last time, so . . . '
After a while it starts to look like maybe going for that swim isn't such a good idea. You'd be forgiven for thinking this way right through their awkward bellyflop into the water. But then blink and they're gone, flying, soaring through the depths. They dive and resurface, porpoising along, little black and white balls, boing boing boing, bounding in and out of the water with something that looks like joy but is probably just practicality. Penguins need to breathe too.
Once, we came across a lone penguin hauled out on an iceberg hundreds of kilometres from land. Just standing there on the ice, looking off into the distance. Penguins are breathtaking. How can I describe the abiding love I feel for these birds I barely know?
Just try write about that.