When I was a child I remember thinking to myself ‘how cool would it be to visit every continent’…

I soon realised that one continent is an icy mass that no human being natively lives on. My childish dream was dead.

But as I got older I started to hear more and more about people visiting Antarctica and before I knew it I was 21 years old and about to set foot on the seventh continent.

Now I had been lucky enough to cruise through Antarctica only a month beforehand and had seen and learnt so much about the ice at the bottom of the world already which only made my return more exciting.

In some sense I knew completely what to expect but at the same time I had absolutely no idea.

I jumped into a zodiac (one of those precarious looking rubber boats), held on tight and before I knew it I was on Antarctica.

Just me, seals and penguins (and about 99 other tourists). It was great.

One of the most magical parts of visiting Antarctica is knowing how few people have seen this part of the world. Every view here is special and exclusive and I felt 50 shades of privileged to be one of the lucky humans who get to admire it.

My first point of physical contact with the continent was on Penguin Island. Penguin Island is actually one of the South Shetland Islands, which are separated from the Antarctica Peninsula by the Bransfield Strait. The island is one of the smaller of the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It has a shoreline of low cliffs and a beach on the north coast that we entered from.

The island is actually a volcana. A volcano that has been historically active – according the the Global Volcanism Program it last erupted in the mid 19th and early 20th centuries – and is likely to do so in the future. But the chance of burning to death in hot lava was far from my mind as we braved the icy cold.

As the name might imply we saw penguins. We saw very cute penguins. Chinstrap penguins were high on my Antarctica sightseeing craving list and this place did not disappoint.

The island was also packed full of seals. Really cute seals. Hundreds of fur seals, a few Weddell seals and we were lucky enough to even spot a lazy elephant seal who was all alone and far from home on the shores.

Basically I was overwhelmed by such a great first day. It was Antarctic happiness overload. Even typing about it makes me smile.

But it was only day one. And there was much more Antarctica happiness to follow in the upcoming week…