The mudroom is the point of entry and exit for the ship whenever there isn’t a harbor providing the luxury of a steady ramp to walk down. Instead, reaching land is by means of walking off the ship into a inflatable, relatively unsinkable Zodiac military boat. The mudroom is where the story of the onion begins.

As the legend goes, there was a mysterious, lone onion in the mudroom. No one pays you much attention when you’re an onion – especially when you don’t have the appeal of red onions for pickling or the preferential treatment of your shallot cousins for risottos. But that’s the way it goes with prophets, isn’t it? Jesus was a carpenter; Muhammad was a shepherd; and now, a run-of-the-mill pantry staple yellow onion – unassuming, but destined for great things.

A naturalist was in the mudroom when the onion appeared to him. He turned to one of the ship’s engineers and asked, “What’s that onion doing here?” “Oh, that’s the lucky onion,” the engineer responded. We can only speculate what took place between the onion and engineer for him to know its purpose. Perhaps he was the first to answer the onion’s calling, but we may never know. It is unlikely the naturalist was immediately receptive to this message. It was a weird response to a valid question of a mysterious onion’s origin.

And yet, this was the day we witnessed the orcas vs gentoo. The close proximity of the animals to our ship, the perfect weather lending itself to incredible visibility of the orcas below the glass-like water surface, the opportunity to observe important animal behaviors and learnings necessary to survive in an unforgiving world – all of it was an undeniably lucky situation to happen upon while in transit (sans the gentoo – RIP little guy).

The day continued on blessed with pleasant weather in Neko Harbor with glasslike water perfectly mirrored and still – only broken up by pristine pieces of ice floating throughout. A beautiful day with the gentoo colonies and an easy pleasant hike with unmatched sights… it isn’t just about us feeling lucky: we are lucky.