The national heat wave.

     My cousin forwarded to me some photos sent to him by a friend taken on a trip to Antarctica. I thought that was a good idea though it may not suffice to make one feel cooler. Maybe if one really concentrated on the photos with mindfulness and turned on creative imagination full dial to the right, you might feel better. If not at least you'll see some of these gorgeous photos.

Various views of glaciers, snow, ice on the Antarctic peninsula and surrounding islands.

Above are 25 pictures that are designed to cool you down.

Here are some details about the photos. This trip occurred in Feb 2008. We flew to Santiago, Chile, and visited Valparaiso and Venue del Mar, then flew to Punta Arenas where we boarded the Hurtigruten Norwegian Cruise boat, Nord Norge. Then we cruised the Chilean Fjords, and saw Torres del Peine which is an amazing place. We were able to mount Cape Horn before we crossed the Drake Passage which that day was like the Drake Lake. We had a total of 12 landings because our weather in Antarctica was so good. The only bad weather was one morning when the deck as you see above was coated with slippery snow and also when we tried to cross the Antarctic Peninsula into the Weddell Sea. There was too much pack ice there and we had to turn around. We landed at the Chilean Research Station twice, in the midst of several penquin colonies, on Deception Island which is actually a flooded volcanic caldera, and at Port Lockroy. In the pictures you see gentoo penquins, adelaide penquins, and chinstrap penquins. In the middle of one gentoo colony there is a single kind penquin lying down which had gotten lost there. See if you can find him. We saw all sorts of birds, whales breeching and waving at us, many seal species and dolphins. It was an absolutely phenomenal trip and well worth the rough return across the Drake. Though it was hard to walk on ship for that crossing, with the scopalamine patches behind our ears, neither of us got at all nauseous and were able to eat dinner, though the crew had difficulty trying to carry in the baked Alaska which was served for dessert that night. We returned to Ushusaia, Argentina and then flew to Buenos Aires, and later Iguasu Falls, then home. If anyone has any questions about this trip, please enter your questions in the comments and I will answer them or email me at renraeretire@gmail.com.