Another landing on the continent, and a hike up snow covered hills to a great vantage point. Lots of Gentoo penguins and two humpbacks in the water. Fabulous day!
Well, not much to say about this visit. The island is pretty interesting, having been formed by a volcano that left a crater just above the water. The result is an island shaped like the letter C, which makes for a wonderful, protected bay. This site was used as a whaling station a century ago, but now of course is abandoned.
Why not much to say then? Because the weather today has been very windy, really cold, heavily overcast and rainy. And no wildlife. Just a crater. So we wimped out and stayed on ship. Beats a two-mile hike to the top of the crater in rain gear, muck boots and thick parkas, IMHO.
So, I leave you with a pic from yesterday where we're sitting on an iceberg.
And we get the first sighting of our 7th penguin species: the Adelie penguin. Same size as the Gentoo and Chinstrap; not as rambunctious as the Chinstrap but just as fun.
We'll make many more landings in Antarctica over the next several days before sailing back to Ushuaia.
We land on the exact spot where Sir Ernest Shackleton's crew spent four months awaiting rescue while Shackleton sailed to South Georgia. Pretty cool. Of course at this time of year it's overrun with chinstrap penguins.
All was not safe for the chinstraps, however. We spot a leopard seal (first one we've seen) hunting for a meal, and in an episode that makes Debb chant "Circle of life..." the leopard seal catches a chinstrap and munches on him. Scavenger birds clean up the remains.
We made it to South Orkney! Home to thousands of chinstrap penguins, the sixth species of penguin we've seen so far. These guys are really funny, especially when they go swimming. They swim in sync, like flying fish, and look like they're having great fun.
We also spotted a Weddell seal for the first time!
South Orkney is south of the 60th parallel, so we're officially in the Antarctica Treaty zone. As I predicted yesterday, it has gotten considerably colder. We're now dodging icebergs the size of apartment buildings, and the Zodiac ride to the island today was wet and freezing cold. On to Antarctica! We hope to make it to Elephant Island tomorrow.
We are now sailing southwest, away from South Georgia on our way to South Orkney. Above is a picture of our ship anchored in Stromness Bay yesterday morning. It has gotten much colder than it was when we were sailing to South Georgia, and we are now sailing against the wind, in swells of 30 feet. My stomach is challenged, shall we just say.
We hope to be able to land at South Orkney to see chinstrap penguins, but this will depend on the wind, fog and ice. We're actually not scheduled to stop there, so if we do it's a bonus. Otherwise we sail straightaway to Elephant Island just off the tip of the Antarctic peninsula, a place famous for where Sir Ernest Shackleton's men hunkered down for many months awaiting rescue in 1916. If you haven't read the book Endurance about Shackleton's two year survival effort after getting stuck in ice while seeking to reach the South Pole, you should download it now. It is a tale more gripping than any novel.
We should reach Antarctica in another two days, and spend five days exploring many sites there before braving two days crossing the Drake Passage to get back to South America.
O.M.G.! King penguins as far as the eye can see. We guess about a half-million ... Reminds me of the Crosby Stills Nash song ("By the time we got to Woodstock ... We were half a million strong ..."). Well, baby, this is Penguin Woodstock!
Bandwidth doesn't permit me to upload all the really funny pics now, but suffice it to say we had a fabulous day. The weather is very capricious here -- this morning it was too windy to dock here; this afternoon we docked to calm winds and another 70-degree day. I think I got sunburned!
This is a "town" in South Georgia (pop. 30) that is really a museum for preserved whaling vessels and a whaling processing plant from 100 years ago. The Brits maintain a Royal Mail post office from which Debb mailed a post card.
The harbor is also full of more elephant seals, king penguins and fur seals, and we could walk right up to them all. I can't resist including some of the cutest. Enjoy!
This fur seal pup was sleeping on whale bones.
Nothing is more regal than a king penguin!
... and more seals!
We moved the ship another thirty miles to a colony of over 250,000 king penguins (plus untold numbers of fur seals). This would have been spectacular, but when we landed we were met with 50-knot winds so powerful it was hard to stand up, let alone hold a camera still. Nonetheless, we soldiered on for about an hour before the captain called us back to the ship as the wind kept increasing.
A glacier of penguins!
"I got an itch."
"Whadda ya lookin' at?!"
We get to make three Zodiac trips today to see wildlife, and then more tomorrow! I expect to have lots of good pictures; again, due to limited bandwidth I can only post a handful. But here we go, from today's first trip.
Macaroni penguins
Gray-headed albatross
Fur seals: a pup and a teenager (the wry smile is the giveaway)
An elephant seal. she looks a bit beat up ...
... and one last view of a macaroni penguin.
It takes two days to sail from the Falkland Islands to South Georgia Island. Look that up on Google Maps -- we are much farther east and approaching the same longitude as Great Britain. We have also crossed south and left the Southern Atlantic Ocean and have entered the Southern Ocean. This is a real ocean, on par with the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic and Indian. It is defined as the point where the circulating water moves east -- actually in a circle around Antarctica, rather than north-south. It is much colder. The Falklands lie in the Southern Atlantic while South Georgia Island is in the Southern Ocean.
We will spend two full days landing at South Georgia. This is where we will see elephant seals, fur seals, and of course the most famous penguins of all, the King penguins. I'm saving my bandwidth to post those photos in a couple of days.
Then it's two more days at sea, heading southwest past the South Orkney Islands over to Elephnt Island and then nearly a full week exploring the Antarctiic peninsula!
I'm putting a map in here but note that it's not to scale. These islands are much farther apart.
We get an early wake up call and board Zodiacs (tiny little rubber speed boats) to land at Saunders Island in the Falklands. Lots and lots of penguins: rockhoppers, gentoos, magellanics; plus plenty of birds including the albatross. It's windy but not cold, yet we bundle up for the Zodiac ride because we get soaked riding to shore!
The rockhoppers are hilarious! Named because they jump from rock to rock and look silly in doing so. When we get home I'll post video on YouTube but it's too expensive to do from here.
We also see a huge expanse of black browed albatrosses nesting with their newly fledged chicks. Very regal birds. We probably spent 2-3 hours just watching all these birds. We could get within a couple of feet of them and they just ignored us! So cool.
On our way to the Falklands we spotted a pod of whales. They're tough to spot ... you have to look for birds circling overhead hoping a whale will stir up stuff for them to eat, then watch for a blow, then *hope* they breach the surface, then *hope* you're fast enough to snap a photo ... that's also in focus. Here's the best I got.
We're at sea, having left Ushuaia last night destined to arrive in the Falkland Islands tomorrow morning. We've had two great lectures aboard ship so far, one on birds and one on the Southern Ocean that have been really interesting and educational. On deck there are dozens and dozens of birds that like to draft in the wind eddy of our ship, which makes for great bird watching. Here is a black-browed albatross having a lazy time zooming about.
The Internet here is very expensive so these posts may get more wordy with less pictures as pictures are big uploads. Forces me to pick only the best photos!
A quick post to say we've arrived in Ushuaia, Argentina -- the southernmost city in the world. Now, that's a bit of a lie, because the mountains you see in the distance are part of Chile and over there, across the Beagle Channel, is Port Williams, Chile. It has 3000 people to Ushuaia's 70,000 so the Argentines say that Port Williams is the southernmost *town* in the world.
We board the ship this afternoon! I don't know how available internet will be, so don't worry if it takes a few days to post anything. Depends on weather and the satellites.
This is pretty cool! The southern Andes have 46 glaciers that, together, comprise the Southern Ice Field. These glaciers are low enough in elevation to see up close, but also to hike on! How cool is that?
Above is the glacier, Glacier Moreno, at the edge of Largo Argentina, the lake into which it "calves" off huge chunks of ice every fifteen minutes or so. You know there's been a calving because it sounds like thunder!
Closer up you can see the edge of the glacier. It's three miles wide, 150 feet tall and eight miles deep. This pic can't convey how big it is.
The ice is so dense that it refracts light in a deep blue color. Gorgeous.
Off we go, hiking on a glacier!
That's me with our expedition leader Kevin. So much fun!
Tomorrow we fly to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, where we will board the ship for our Antarctic adventure.
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