The FInal Approach to South Georgia

Today was a day with a bit of uncertainty in it. When we went to bed Friday night, it was unclear when we'd be arriving at South Georgia. So the day didn't have much scheduled. We had a wake-up call at 7:30am and heard that a humpback whale and some wandering albatross had been spotted on the bridge. In addition, we we about to pass Shag's Rock, which is at the very northern end of South Georgia. It's not a site where we could land, and once we saw it, we understood why not. There are sheer rock cliffs that jut out of the ocean in the middle of nowhere basically. The light was beautiful when shining on the rocks, and there were lots of birds flying around, so we were up on the bridge deck (deck 7) and inside the bridge with our binoculars and camera even before breakfast. Then we ate breakfast and attended two lectures this morning. The first was the completion of Hugh Rose's talk on the tectonic plates and the glaciology of South Georgia. The second was a talk by Dag Nevestad on the whaling operations of South Georgia. Just before Dag's talk, it was announced that the first iceberg of the trip had been spotted. There was a contest to guess when we'd see the first iceberg, defined as one at least as large as a bus. We were off by about a week in our guess!

After lunch, Greg attended a seminar by Bruce Miller on Lightroom techniques while Lori napped and wrote in the journal. We also spent some time on the bridge looking for fur seals in the water – we finally found some! Not that we got any photos, unfortunately. After dinner, we finally arrived at the northern end of South Georgia Island. We first passed Willis Island, then Bird Island, and then we were at South Georgia. As we arrived around 8 or 8:30pm, we did not make a landing. Instead, we did a "ship cruise" into Elsehul Bay and checked out the gorgeous landscape. With binoculars we could see lots of nesting albatross and penguins. There are also lots and lots of fur seals frolicking in the water. They are fun to watch, and we tried to take some photos of those as well but it's too difficult to know if any turned out.

We are starting early tomorrow and have two landings. The first is at Salisbury Plain, which is where the second largest colony of King Penguins resides. We expect to see a huge number of Kings tomorrow. But we are doing the early landing, so breakfast starts at 4:30am and the zodiacs start at 5:30am. Then we are back on the ship by noon for lunch and to motor to the next landing site. That's Prion Island where we will see nesting albatross. After three days at sea, it will be good to be back on land again.