Day 237 – 59°23’ S, 050°12’ W, South Atlantic

We eventually reached South Georgia and the temperature got noticeably colder. I’m glad I packed the thermal undies because they were essential on our excursions to land. The weather had changed quite a bit too and on reaching Possession Bay the conditions weren’t right for a landing. Instead, we headed around to Salisbury Plain in The Bay of Isles just on the North of the island. What a sight! We’d seen a few King Penguins at The Falklands, maybe six or seven, but the numbers here were astronomical. It was absolutely incredible to see around 100,000 thousand of them all at varying stages of maturity. Axel, our German bird expert, dubbed the young chicks ‘fluffies’ due to them being decked out in puffed up brown feather coats. They looked nothing like their adult parents and early explorers thought they were an entirely different species. As we moved amongst the surging penguin crowds we saw adorable displays of affection between mating couples, the male performing what’s known as his ‘advertising walk’; a sort of John Travolta swagger with surreptitious glances back to see if his ‘bird’ was following him and therefore interested. If she was attracted to him they would then start preening each other before he started getting serious and stroking her head with his beak. Eventually, if he’d wooed her enough, she would lay down looking all vulnerable yet submissive and he would jump on top of her while the going was good. Some people got pictures of this ‘penguin porn’ and happily shared it around amongst the other passengers.

The following day we had moved down to Fortuna Bay and were woken up early to the most beautiful sunrise. From the boat we looked at the view of the snow capped mountains bathed in the vivid orange glow of the rising sun and I was mesmerised. I’d woken up really grumpy that morning for some reason but that black mood soon disappeared when I saw what was waiting for us on land. We zipped across the bay in the Zodiacs and were soon on the beach to meet the welcoming committee of baby fur seals and king penguins. The fur seals were ridiculously cute and would come up to us practising being fierce but as soon as you looked at them and took a step towards them, their bravado disappeared and they retreated with a whimper. I was so tempted to steal one and put it in my rucksack but I think storing it in my cabin may have been a bit of a problem. Walking along the beach was a real joy as the sun was just beginning to appear over the mountain top as day broke and the rich, warm light flooding the place made it magical. I was in a world of my own wandering along the beach, and spent much of it walking alone and taking endless pictures of seal cubs being adorable and king penguins looking at me curiously. Despite all this beauty and apparent calm, I was reminded just how hostile this environment can be when I came across the skull of a seal pup picked clean by the scavenging birds. Further along, there were carcases of more dead seals and the occasional penguin husk. A really sad image was of a seal pup wandering up to one of the baggy dead skins and sniffing at it the way that it would greet another of its colony. It pondered for a moment before heading off to the sea for an early morning swim.

I carried on walking to the end of the beach where the others had starting congregating and got a good view of Fortuna Glacier that dominated the west side of the bay. This is where Shackelton had descended before heading to Stromness on the other side of the saddle. This was a nice place to just sit down and enjoy watching the king penguins. Again, being so inquisitive, it wasn’t long before they starting egging each other on to come and explore me and my camera. They are very considerate as this makes it easy to take some lovely photographs of them and I’ve got some fantastic shots. It helps also that the light that morning was perfect.

The afternoon was a completely different matter. After lunch, the weather took a real turn as it has a habit of doing in this part of the world. We took the zodiacs to Grytviken which is an old whaling station that started business in 1904, five weeks after Larsen first landed there. It was chosen because of it’s calm location and is effectively a bay within a bay. The first thing we did was make a beeline for Shackelton’s grave where we gathered to make a toast to the great explorer. This was Woody’s idea, our tour leader, who is a bit of a Shackleton freak. The grave is set within a small whaler’s graveyard and it was his wife’s decision to have him buried in the place that he loved. We lifted our plastic cups, half full of flat Guinness, and toasted his memory during which some of the group posed for photos while draping themselves over his headstone, Guinness in hand. Very respectful, I must say. This was all carried out to the grunting and farting chorus of a small group of female elephant seals that had wiggled their way up onto the tussac grass.

The group was then given a choice of three things to do, we could either go for a walk to Brown Hill with Annie, do a photographic walk with John or just wander around exploring the old whaling station. I decided to go for John’s photographic tour of the place which turned out to be a complete washout because as soon as I got my camera out, the heaven’s opened and we were engulfed in a torrential downpour. I took refuge in the whaler’s church and took the opportunity to give the bell a ring. Nothing happened on my first tug of the rope, so I gave a slightly harder tug. Still nothing. On my third go I pulled with all my might and I thought the bell was going to be wrenched from the rafters! It clanged like there was an earthquake and I literally ducked at the thought it coming crashing down from the belfry. I slipped out of the church hoping that nobody had seen me and I think I got away with it. It would have been terrible if I’d brought the roof crashing in as it’s been standing there since 1913!

I spent the rest of my time at Grytviken wandering around the remains of the whaling station and my mood sank at the thought of the wholesale destruction of so many whales there. This was murder on an industrial scale and though I realise that attitudes were very different in those days I still found it difficult to comprehend just what a slaughter it must have been. The water in the bay ran red at the time and it’s said that the smell of whale oil still lingers in the rusting old vats that remain there. Huge cookers that rendered down the flensed blubber into oil are still pretty much intact and though the whole site is decaying into rust it is still scary to see the huge scale of the operation. Even a few of the old whaling ships remain, partially submerged and hauled up onto the banks of the bay, ironically much like their quarry from the past.

The museum was an interesting little place, full of more Shackelton memorabilia as well as various stuffed birds including a wandering albatross, some moulted seal fur and skin, the pelt of a king penguin and a four month old blue whale foetus in a jar. The gift shop didn’t have any fridge magnets so I was most disappointed that I won’t have a souvenir from there.

While I was waiting for Rich to come back from his walk with Annie to Brown Hill, I had a walk around the bay towards King Edward Point. I didn’t get all the way as it was still pelting with rain but I did see the most fantastic rainbow stretching right across the bay. It was the first time that I had seen both ends of it within my field of vision, but alas no crock of gold. Typically, the sun started to come out once we were aboard the zodiac and heading toward the ship again.

We spent the following morning at Gold Harbour and the weather was spectacularly bad. We were drenched before even getting out of the zodiacs and I didn’t even bother getting my camera out of its bag. There were more adult fur seals there and even a few big bulls. We made sure that we definitely stayed out of their way as they were very aggressive. We were warned not to get too close to them by Kirsten who suggested that if we were bitten we would be ‘leaking puss for the next three weeks’. Not a very attractive prospect so we took her advice and gave them a very wide berth. This was the first time that we’d seen male elephant seals, too and they are immense. We’d seen pictures of them in some of the presentations but until you see one up close you have absolutely no idea of their size. Kirsten reminded us that they were only adolescents and once they reached maturity they would be almost twice the length and about five times the weight. These things can reach up 3.5 tonnes and grow to 5 metres long which is about 44 times my weight and 2.5 times longer than I am tall. Truly they are giants and they have an smell to match their weight; they stink of rotting kelp and fermenting gasses which they expel noisily from both ends of their bodies. They are certainly not attractive, and even the females don’t choose them on their looks, they go by which one has the best part of the beach.

The penguins and baby seals stole the show again though, purely because they are just so amusing to watch. Needless to say, due to the very appalling weather, we didn’t stay long on that particular excursion. We queued to take the next available zodiac to the ship while the crew battled with the waves and seal cubs nipping at their boots. It took more than 24 hours to dry out my waterproofs after that little trip.
We’ve now been sailing for two days solid as we make our way to Antarctica proper. We’ve seen so much on this trip already and even as we trundle along the south Atlantic sea, battered by waves and fierce howling, frozen winds we are still seeing hundreds of birds, miles from land as well as groups of whales making their presence known by the occasional blow of air in the distance. The talks continue in the presentations rooms and our days are pretty full of things to do between the constant bouts of eating. Some people have been pretty sea sick due to the rough weather, but my pills are doing their job well and I’ve not succumbed to the evils of the weather. Mind you, each time the ship slams into a wave I keep thinking that we’ve hit one of the numerous ice bergs that we’ve seen in the distance. My symptoms are more of anxiety and an over active imagination than any reflexive stomach action. Thankfully.