If you sit long enough, you can watch the ice melt and pieces of the glacier fall into the water and float away as icebergs. I wonder what the penguins think about what’s going on in their world with the rising temperatures. The ornithologist said that the penguins somehow know when a big chunk of ice will fall into the water. They dash up the slopes to higher ground to avoid being swept away by the huge waves that occur when the water is displaced by the massive chunks of ice.

“Lieutenant, did you see the strange aliens that have landed on our island? They walk on two legs like us. Let’s check them out.”

I could have watched the big penguin colonies like this one for hours. The penguins like to walk up steep slopes then race down—or toboggan with their bodies. Most likely this behavior has some sort of meaning, but to me it looks like they do it for fun.

A mother whale and her baby are resting—or “logging” as the whalers called it. From a distance, these whales did indeed look like enormous logs floating in the water.

The forces of nature create stunning shapes in the many icebergs that float in the sea.

This leopard seal has his eye on us. They can be aggressive. When we saw a leopard seal while kayaking, we moved our kayaks close together so that we would look more formidable to him.

A former science station owned by Argentina, now abandoned.

The remains of a boat used by whalers, surrounded by whale bones.

We frequently sighted humpback whales. What a treat we had when they came close to us to check us out. Their main activity this time of year is eating hundreds of pounds of krill to fatten up for their long voyage to the north when winter comes to the southern hemisphere. The ship’s marine biologist expressed dismay about the amount of krill that is being taken by companies to sell in health food stores. I won’t be recommending krill oil to any of my patients.

The penguins seemed to prefer to have their colonies in high places. While kayaking, we saw a small colony on a floating ice berg. I saw one of the penguins toboggan down a steep slope and into the water. I don’t know how they are able to walk up steep slopes without crampons and an ice axe.

The seals and whales spend a lot of time resting between meals. No blogs or FB to to deal with because there is no internet service down here,

Being in this primordial paradise has profoundly affected me. To think about the possibility of the international treaty expiring in 2041—opening Antarctica up to the highest bidder for drilling and mining—makes me feel physically sick. It would be like watching a beloved friend or family member become dismembered and slowly tortured to death. I’m going to let go of this miserable thought and return to the present moment,

If you look closely, you will see in the center of the photograph two black objects, They are whales. I sat in my kayak stunned by the majesty of the surroundings. I felt the silence envelope me in profound peace. I have never breathed such pure air—except for the air around the penguin poop which can be quite acrid from all the krill that they eat.

Antarctica has many moods. We know how fortunate we have been with the weather.

I’m in the zodiac on a special mission that will be carried out on land. Before I left Santa Fe, one of my patients—a teacher of qigong at the Chi Center in Galisteo—asked me to teach qigong to a group of passengers. The founder of the Chi Center, Master Mingtong Gu, has teachers and students of qigong on every continent except Antarctica. My assignment is to teach three specific poses. I managed to round up seven people to participate in this qigong-on-every-continent project.

The little adelie penguins greeted us at the edge of the water, curious to see what was going on. I could have rounded some of them up to be in my qigong class so that people back home would be convinced that the class really did take place in Antarctica. But, as it turns out, one of the poses, Chen Chi, is a pose that the penguins do all day, every day. In fact, Chen Chi needs to be renamed “the penguin pose.”

What you’re seeing is Chen Chi, renamed “the penguin pose.” The arms are out by the sides at the level of the belly button. The hands are flexed. The scapulae (wing bones in the back) are squeezed together and then released, sending the stagnant qi (energy) down through the arms and out the center of the palms. We did each pose three times.