Up To Our Chins in Chinstraps

Today is our last day of the expedition before we head north into the Drake Passage for the first part of our return home. It is bittersweet to be sure.

We started by landing at Bailey Head. This is a fantastic spot, one of our favorites (among several favorites). This is a beautiful black sand beach and there are estimated to be at least 100,000 nesting pairs of chinstrap penguins here. It's reputed to be a difficult landing, and one that we skipped earlier on in the trip due to bad weather. But today was pretty good. The landing is a bit rough because you have to gauge the timing of the waves, and it takes up to 8 staff to hold a zodiac in the waves so passengers can unload onto the beach and then load back in to return to the ship. They are very careful, and willing to get pretty much drenched in the process. The beach has a steep rise so the waves break right at the edge of the water, which is what makes this a tough landing. They cautioned us to lighten our packs which some people completely ignored (but not us). The staff has been so great in getting us access to some amazing places; it's just right to put them in danger by ignoring their advice.

Once we landed, we understood why everyone has been raving about this place and working so hard to make our landing here. At most sites, we are instructed not to cross the "penguin highway" and we were here as well. Only here, it's really a penguin "superhighway." The penguin traffic literally never stops. They are constantly streaming into the ocean to feed and clean themselves, as others porpose out of the ocean and onto the black sand beach to return to their colony and chicks.

There are several colonies stretching up a hundred feet or more onto the cliffs of Deception Island. The landing site is on the outside of the island, which is really the caldera of a still active volcano. Though it hasn't erupted recently, there were significant volcanic events in 1967 and 1969 which wiped out the British station on the edge of the (inside of the) caldera. This first landing wa on the outside of the caldera, so no volcanic risk anyway! It was by far the largest site with chinstrap penguins, with lots of chicks which are always cute.

After spending some time photographing the penguins on the beach, and their activity heading into and out of the water, we walked up a bit to where the colonies are. We still have no idea why the penguins persist in climbing so high to make their nests – one theory is that the higher spots are where the snow and ice melt first, or get cleared by the wind, so that's where they nest. The farthest reaches are a heck of a commute to the ocean – we didn't even get up there ourselves! But they say that penguins are the second most efficient walkers (after humans) so I guess it doesn't bother them too much.

Anyway, we spent some time up in the hills a bit, and here again, there are multiple clusters within the colony, and penguins as far as the eye can see. Most of the sites are pretty red from the guano, and none are situated on snow or ice. In fact, we commented again today that there have been surprisingly few landings with snow or ice or penguins on snow or ice this entire trip. We spent some time at the colony, and then headed back to the landing to return to the ship. This was the most organized entry into a zodiac yet. We lined up into two lines of four people to race into the zodiac once it was ready to be boarded. The waves came in a couple of times and got the bow of the zodiac a bit wet. The goal was to get everyone (plus their gear) loaded in about 7-10 seconds, which I think we pretty much accomplished.

The real excitement for our zodiac though, was when the motor died. When it was coming into the landing site, it was swamped in the waves, and they think sand was pushed into the motor. So we changed zodiacs in the middle of the bay by climbing from one to the other, and gear bags were passed over as well. Off we went to the ship for lunch.

Prior to lunch, the ship passed through Neptune's Bellows, which is a narrow "hole" in the donut which makes up Deception Island. The next item on the agenda was one that we decided not to partake of – this was the opportunity to go "swimming." What this meant was, for those "daft" enough to do it, you could put on a bathing suit, plus your various outer layers, and then head to the shore at Whaler's Cove. Then you could strip off your outer layers, plunge into the ocean, and then try to find a "hot spot" where the ocean meets the beach. The sand was indeed hot enough to see steam rising off of it, even from the ship, but whereas we initially thought that this activity entailed heading into a "hot spring" it was a far cry from that. So we didn't even get off the ship – we just watched about 25 people doing it through binoculars. It was cold enough standing out on the deck photographing them; we didn't need to be there jumping into the ocean ourselves!

Once the "swimming" was over, we left the inside of Deception Island and cruised to Livingston Island to make our final landing at Hannah Point. This final stop had all of the flowering flora of Antarctica – which consists of two grasses. It also has chinstraps and gentoos, and the chicks are older here because we are further north so they are farther along in their breeding cycle than other penguins we've seen in Antarctica. At this stage of their development, the chicks are starting to be weaned by their parents, so sometimes the only way the chicks will get fed is if they chase their parent until the parent finally relents and gives them some food. It's pretty hilarious to watch as the penguins chase each other around. They are sometimes pretty clumsy, so typically at least one of the penguins in the race falls which ends it. We did see one penguin repeatedly tapping its parent's beak to get food, and the parent obliged at least half a dozen times (we could see the krill in transit, which is kind of gross actually). Then the parent got tired of the chick and started sort of pecking it or trying to get it to stop asking for food. Suddenly, the parent started running up the hill with the chick in hot pursuit – only the chick seemed to be even fatter than the parent, so it couldn't really keep up.

The other attraction at Hannah Point is the concentration of elephant seals. They are big and very stinky! They lay in a big pile – I counted over 60 in one place – and they are molting, so they haven't moved in a while. Thus, they are in a "wallow" which is where they've been living full time, so it's where their waste collects as well, in addition to the dead skin which is being molted off. It's very pungent, and they have mucus coming out of their noses (and no way to blow their noses), which they snort out occasionally. It's so odiferous that we had to move after a bit to get away from the smell!

We walked back through the penguins, occasionally stopping by one. They are sometimes curious, and Greg had one that came pretty close to him and was looking at him seeming sort of puzzled. Then he'd look up at Greg's face while Greg was looking down of course...it's all very cute.

Finally, it was back to the ship on our final zodiac cruise ride of this trip. This was followed by dinner and then we saw a movie about rounding Cape Horn. The footage was shot in 1929 and narrated by the photographer in 1980 or so. It was kind of interesting – but we are hoping that our seas are not quite so big.

The forecast for the Drake is some rough seas, but about the magnitude which we felt when crossing from South Georgia and the South Orkeys to Antarctica. We didn't feel bad during that crossing and are hoping that's as bad as it gets.

We've heard that tomorrow (Monday) is the last day for internet access, so this post, but hopefully tomorrow's, will be our last until we get home. We will try to post more pictures tomorrow. It's been a fantastic adventure, but we are looking forward to sleeping in our own bed, getting a clean (no penguin smell) set of clothes, and taking a really long hot shower!