... 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.
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