Penguins on the Beach!

Today was a day of contrasts. We started this morning with a visit to Westpoint Island for a dry landing (one where you don't have to put your boots in the water to get out of the zodiac). This is rare, but allowed us to wear our hiking boots for the morning, which are more comfortable for the hiking we've been doing. Our tour company estimated that we would then walk 1.5 miles to cross the island...but we have our GPS and it was more like 2.5 miles, up a winding fairly steep hill into the wind, which is pretty gusty as there are no trees anywhere! Anyway, once there we saw more black-browed albatross and rockhopper penguins. The albatross were doing more courtship rituals, so that was fun to see. But the day started out fairly rainy so it was a bit chilly. By the end of the morning landing, though, the sun was streaming through and it was a good visit. We were able to take a Land Rover back to the landing site, and were dropped at the home of the couple who lives there and owns the island. They had prepared an incredible spread of sweets - chocolate cake, various cookies, and the best scones I've ever had (so light!) along with fresh rhubarb jam. That plus tea or coffee made a delightful ending to the morning's visit.

Then it was back to the ship for lunch, a nap, and Greg helped some new friends Roy and Jacqui from Lander, Wyoming with their digital photography storage questions. Around 2pm we were gearing up for our second landing of the day.

We landed at Carcass Island for the afternoon, which is a fantastic landing on a beautiful white sand beach. It's a gorgeous beach and totally unexpected. How many can say they can see penguins entering and leaving the water while sitting and sunning themselves on a beach? Well, now we can! This beach had a fair number of magellanic penguins. We also hiked a bit to get to a gentoo penguin colony, where a long king penguin also was hanging out. We are quickly becoming pretty good at recognizing the various different penguin species. In fact, at the end of the afternoon on the beach we got some funny shots of a "stand-off" between a magellanic penguin and a gentoo. Perhaps you had to be there...

As for the weather, after this morning's light rain, it was another mostly clear day. In fact, the biggest issues we have with the weather are applying enough sunblock - we both got fairly sunburned yesterday - and regulating our body temperature. Especially on this afternoon's landing, it was wet in the zodiac and that ocean water is cold! So we have on sufficient layers to stay warm while getting to shore, and then once there, with the hiking we've been doing, we often get too warm. The ventilation in the rain jackets and pants we brought with us has been invaluable. The other big weather variable is the wind. It's often blowing 20 mph while we're on shore, especially on cliffs or near the ocean, so that makes things challenging as well (especially when, as this morning, we are hiking uphill into the wind!).

All in all, we're having a great time so far. Tomorrow is another full day - wake-up call at 6, landings start at 7:30 and we're out until 4:00pm. We're visiting Steeple Jason tomorrow, and everyone who's been on this trip before is absolutely raving about it. Ted Cheeseman, our expedition leader, says it's one of his favorite places on earth. He also says the landing will be either "difficult" or "very difficult" with an exit from the zodiac onto slippery, algae covered rocks. So keep your fingers crossed that all goes well!

At 4pm tomorrow (Wednesday, I believe), we are setting sail for South Georgia Island. I think it will take about 48 hours to get there, so we should have some time between Wednesday afternoon and the first landing on Friday afternoon to post a picture or two from the expedition thus far. In the meantime, we find ourselves exhausted again so we'll close for now.