The Winds (and Penguins!) of St. Andrew's Bay

Super fantastic! Mambo sawa sawa! These are the words Doug Cheeseman, founder of the Cheeseman's Ecology Safari, would use to describe today in St. Andrew's Bay. Doug said in the 17 trips they've done using this similar itinerary, today was the best day they've ever had at this spot. And it's hard to imagine how it could have been much better.

It was a "normal" morning, in that we were allowed to sleep until 6:30am before our wake-up call, with the first zodiacs to shore at 8am. We signed up to have lunch on shore, in order to maximize our available time at the landing. The last zodiacs were scheduled to return to the ship at 6:30pm. So that's the potential for 10 ½ hours on shore. This explains why we are so tired!

We landed on one of the first zodiacs, and headed for a King penguin colony near a river running along one side of the landing. The river is actually run-off from a glacier that comes close to the beach on that side of the landing. It was good for a few minutes, then it started to rain. Having learned our lesson the hard way a few days ago that rain and camera equipment do not mix, we pretty quickly packed away our gear and just wandered around for a while. At 10am, by which time the rain had stopped, we met a small group of people along with professional photographers and staff Tom Murphy and Rod Planck for a photography workshop. I thought it would last about an hour. Pretty quickly, the group split into two, with only 3 people (Lori and two others) staying with Tom while Greg went with Rod. The idea was to take a few shots of penguins on the beach and then wander up to the ridge overlooking the King penguin colony which boasts 150,000 breeding pairs. Suffice to say, it was another day of penguin landscapes!

Three hours after we began with Tom, we were still picking his brain for technical, and more importantly, composition tips to improve our photography. Greg was long since done with his workshop, and we finally hooked up around 1pm or so and compared notes. Then we spent maybe half an hour to an hour on the ridge continuing to shoot the penguin landscape. It's hard to describe, but basically, there are penguins everywhere the eye can see, from the ocean beach, where they come crashing in and out of the waves, along the river that runs through that side of the colony as well, and up to the base of the glaciers that run nearly to the ocean. There's a second, larger river that runs from this second glacier to the ocean, and that's where the penguins who are molting stand – for 3-4 weeks – as they wait for their old feathers to fall out and new ones to grow in. During this time, they can't go into the ocean, which means they don't eat, since all their food lives there. Some of the young birds going through their first molt are covered in long brown fur – they call them kiwis since that's kind of what they look like! Anyway, the mixture of colors, from the brown kiwis (or okum boys) to the regal black and white with their yellow or orange highlights on their neck and the top of the chest, make for some interesting and colorful patterns to shoot.

However, by 2pm or so, the winds started howling off the mountains behind us. We haven't said so before, but a few years ago, at this landing, the winds started howling very quickly – from 0 to 100mph in a split second, and the landing had to be evacuated. It turned out that some were too slow to get back to the landing, by which time it was too dangerous to return the zodiacs to the ship. So 28 people wound up taking the remaining zodiacs across the rivers I talked about earlier (they were suddenly too deep and fast to cross on foot) to a research hut maybe a quarter mile away (we could see it from the landing). There they were stuck for about 11 hours. This was not a scenario we wished to repeat! So when the winds started up today, we heard they may be calling for an evacuation and they were asking people to return from the ridge to the landing site just in case. We took a few more photos, just about got blown over in the very strong winds, and then decided to head for the landing. We figured at worst, we would get some lunch and return.

Once we got to the beach, we did indeed have lunch, and the winds died down a bit. So we decided to attend a second photography workshop with Tom Murphy, and made our way back over to the ridge overlooking the main colony again. Once that workshop ended maybe 2 hours later, we stayed on the ridge another hour before making our way back to the landing and back to the ship. After a quick lukewarm shower for Lori (it was hot for Greg!) we headed for dinner and now are dumping our camera memory cards and generally preparing for tomorrow.

And what a day we expect! It's to be another early landing, with breakfast starting at 4:30, the first zodiacs to shore starting at 5:30, and the opportunity to remain onshore until 7pm. Yes, that's a 13 ½ hour landing – the Cheeseman's have a reputation for getting people onto shore more hours than any other company out there. Here again, it's hard to imagine otherwise.

So for now, it's good night, and we'll have to go through photos to upload more when we are at sea in another 2 days or so as we are, once again, exhausted!

Pictures!

Attached are four more pictures for your viewing pleasure. Believe me, this is a small sampling of what we have - just today we took about 1,500 shots of various macaroni penguins along the cliffs of Hercules Bay.

Of the photos attached, one is from our stop at Salisbury Plains - it's a sea of King penguins! There is a second shot which is a single large wandering albatross. They have an 11 foot wingspan and are gorgeous. We've also selected a landscape shot of Gentoo penguins on a cliff overlooking the ocean. You can see how far up they are - and it's not clear why they nest so high up on the cliffs. Finally, we've added a shot of a macaroni penguin mid-hop (he's got the bright orange feathers on his head) as he was making his way across some rocks. Enjoy!

Macaroni Penguins and a Toast to Shackleton

We arrived in Hercules Bay to another gorgeous morning on South Georgia. Our good weather karma has continued! The first landing was one of three options: the inner landing by the waterfall, the outer landing, or zodiac cruising. At the inner landing, some intrepid folks (but not us) hiked the side of a steep hill right at the beach in an effort to find nesting macaroni penguins. There were a few penguins but lots of fur seals lounging up the entire cliff. There were also macaroni penguins coming in and out of the water amongst the fur seals, and loafing King penguins by the beautiful waterfall.

The outer landing had macaronis on a jetty hanging among the rocks and waves so we were able to get great close-ups. But the zodiac cruising in the morning was probably the best because we got right up next to the rocks and cliffs and saw lots of macaronis in nests, displaying courtship behaviors, loafing about and jumping into and out of the water. Light-mantled sooty albatross were doing synchronized flying, and we also saw kelp gulls, sheathbills, South Georgia shags and skuas. Even the patterns of the kelp washing with the swells was really interesting.

Just after lunch, the second iceberg of the trip was spotted in East Cumberland Bay. The view of the glaciers from the bridge was beautiful – and the mountains peeking from behind the clouds were tantalizing. After making anchor in East Cumberland Bay, we heard a talk from the South Georgia Heritage Trust regarding the rat eradication program currently underway. This important project should help improve the bird populations immensely.

The second landing of the day was at the former whaling station of Grytviken. The landing began at the grave of Ernest Shackleton and the new grave of Frank Wild, who is now buried to the right of Shackleton as he was Shackleton's right hand man. Frank Wild's remains had been buried elsewhere but were returned to South Georgia only two months ago to be placed near his "boss." We raised a toast to both Shackleton and Wild in memory of their incredible journey of survival.

Next we wandered through what remains of the old whaling station, which essentially consists of extremely rusty old whaling station parts, including giant barrels where the oil from the blubber of whales and seals used to be stored. There are a couple of scuttled ships rusting along shore, along with exposed whale bones from days gone by. In addition, we visited the museum which has a new natural history wing and a small gift shop. Finally, we visited the post office where we sent off a few postcards. It turns out that it only costs US $1 to mail a postcard to the US – quite a bargain!

Grytviken is important historically to South Georgia, but the damage that was done to entire species in such a short period of time with absolutely no regard for their ongoing populations is astounding. It's kind of a sad stop along the way.

The evening ended with a barbecue out on deck. We had barbecued pork spareribs, grilled prawns, and chorizo sausage, accompanied by the usual selection of salads and veggies: a simple lettuce salad, a salad of tomatoes and cucumbers, corn on the cob, grilled veggies in balsamic, and a cold seafood salad, along with a cheese tray, bread, and free wine, beer and sodas. It was quite a spread!

Tomorrow we set sail for St. Andrews Bay (conditions permitting). We have our fingers crossed for good weather continuing as this bay can be a difficult landing with katabatic winds blowing off the mountains. We'll report back tomorrow!

The Shackleton "Stroll"

Today was another challenging day of the South Georgia Marathon. This is the term affectionately given to our time here in South Georgia. We may be on vacation but we are definitely not resting!

The morning began early again with a 6:30am wakeup call. Zodiacs were loading at 8:00 but we were a few minutes late because I spent a bit more time using the hair dryer on our wet gloves from yesterday. I made good progress and today we brought spare pairs, didn't use liners on our waterproof gloves which we only used in the Zodias, etc. Of course, the weather was perfect all day, for which everyone was quite grateful.

We landed at Fortuna Bay with its usual complement of fur seals. These were much less aggressive than we had yesterday, but the beach was still littered with them – lots and lots of very young baby fur seals. We then walked up the beach a bit, and hiked up the hill to see a gentoo colony that was "gentoos living on a golf course" - provided the golf could was perched in a very small patch about 700 feet up on a cliff. We got some good views from there, with penguins, mountains and ocean in the background. In addition, there are reindeer on South Georgia Island, and we saw several dozen of those. The reindeer really get around – at one point they were even lounging on the beach with the seals. However, as reindeer are non-endemic species, they are going to be eradicated (ie., killed or relocated) once the rats are eradicated (definitely killed). The reindeer will be addressed after the rats because they chew the grass or something – anyway, it makes it easier to find the rats to have the reindeer around.

After spending some time with the gentoos, we decided to head over to the King penguin colony. However, this meant hiking back down to the beach and past a bunch of fur seals. We don't like having to negotiate our way past a lot of fur seals, so we took the "easy" way by hiking across the cliffs. We then wound up at a site where there were two light-headed sooty mantle albatross nesting near a beautiful waterfall. This is a beautiful bird with a gray head and they are hard to spot. In fact, we'd heard earlier that they were nesting about 600 feet up on a cliff and that it was "500mm" lens photography (a long lens, which we do not have0. So we had decided to skip it. Yet because we were hiking across rather than down, we stumbled across them anyway!

We continued until we got to a good spot to descend and made our way to a "mini" king penguin colony – not the main one. By this time it was at least noon, and we had to be back at the landing by 2pm. So we hung out with the King penguins a bit, and then made our way back to the landing site where lunch – a sandwich each and two of the last few brownies – awaited. We also picked up some Snickers bars for the hike ahead.

Those going on the Shackleton hike were transported by Zodiac to a second landing site where we started the hike. There were a total of 75 people making the walk, advertised as 3.3 miles. We tracked it with the GPS and when all was said and done it was close to that. The walk itself started out on a narrow beach and headed up a fairly steep hill, through some tussock grasses and past – guess what? - more fur seals and some "small" elephant seals. It was amazing they could climb that high! We had sticks to keep them at bay so were fine. Once past the grassy areas, the walk is characterized by lots of chunky rocks from glaciers long ago. The rocks are beautiful shades of brown, orange and rust. The photography wasn't that spectacular on the hike but there were some pretty snow-covered mountains that we shot. About a third of the way into it, we stopped for a chocolate break! The staff had brought chocolate bars to keep everyone's energy up. Yum!

The hike was nice becuae we actually walked across a portion of the interior of the island, so got a chance to see that versus just the shore landings we typically do. Toward the end of the hike, we went down a fairly steep hill – it felt like walking through uncured concrete with large rocks in it at times – on a slope adjacent to where Shackleton and his companions descended via rope down a waterfall. You know what happens next – we went to see the waterfall. We saw one, took some photos, and then learned it wasn't the real Shackleton waterfalls. So of course, that's where we headed next. After spending time there as well, we began the hike back to the landing at Stromness Bay. Toward the end of that walk, we hiked a small hill to see more gentoos – and what was hilarious there was seeing them come in from the ocean quite a distance – maybe half a mile, up and down pretty big hills (for a penguin), across some bodies of water (which they swam through), and up to this nesting site which was nothing terribly special as far as we could tell.

Time by then was growing a bit short, so we finally made our way down and across some boggy areas to the landing site where the fur seals appeared again (they were absent during the rocky Shackleton hike). Stromness Bay was a whaling station in the days when there were whalers and sealers on South Georgia. Now it's dilapidated and full of asbestos so we stayed a good distance away from it. We headed back to the ship for dinner and some desperately needed showers.

The weather today was beautiful – in fact, we were hot more than anything else. We were shedding layers during the hike, applying and reapplying sunscrren, used our sun hats, etc. The weather was spectacular, but clouds were rolling in over the mountain passes behind us as we were loading the zodiacs, and in fact it started to snow a little bit. I believe the air temperature was in the high 30s.

Finally, we pulled anchor and moved into another bay with a small whaling station – maybe Leith Bay – where the resident historian Dag Nevestad actually spent two months working as an archaeologist. But we are now exhausted and awaiting our day tomorrow which should be less strenuous.

Fur Seals Attack!

When we started planning for this trip, roughly 2/3 of the people we told about it thought we were nuts. We're okay with that! We like to do things that are off the beaten path and outside our comfort zone. Sometimes we may get a bit too far outside our comfort zone though, and today was a bit of that.

We started at a very early 4:30am – so early, there wasn't even a wake-up call, so it's a good thing we both travel with our phones which have alarm clocks. The plan was to have a cold breakfast and then begin taking our zodiacs at 5:30am to our first landing at Salisbury Plains. Unfortunately, the weather worked against us today, starting with a low ceiling and thus our first landing was delayed until 7:00 or so. But we did make a landing, which wasn't difficult until we hit the beach. Remember the "frolicking fur seals" we talked about yesterday? Well, they should be named the "Devil Seal" in the same way that the Striated Caracara is named the "Devil's Bird." They are aggressive, they attack repeatedly, and they've already bitten 3 people during this Antarctic season. Fortunately, none on our expedition, at least that we've heard of, but they are definitely a nuisance to watch out for. We landed and immediately picked up a stick, plus used one tripod as another stick to keep them away. When they charge (mouth open and teeth bared), you are supposed to point the stick at them to get them to stop. I'm not sure they've all ready the same handbook however... we had one charge several times and we had to be pretty firm to get him to turn away.

The other challenge for the morning's landing was that it was raining. Not the light little mist we've seen a bit of so far on the trip, but a steady, fairly firm rain that drenched everything. Fortunately our rain gear worked pretty well with the exception of our gloves. I don't think there's a person onboard who went ashore and had dry gloves at the end of the morning. Let's just say that the "hair dryers" on board have been in use all afternoon and not for drying hair! But despite the weather, we took a few photos on shore before finally putting away Lori's cameraa. Then we joined a hike to the top of the hill at the landing site to get a view of the penguin landscape. Salisbury Plains is a quite famous shot where, if you hike the hill that we did, you can shoot down over a sea of King penguins. They are of different colors – some are all brown fuzzy feathers while others are mostly black and white but going through their annual molt, which is when the old feathers are forced out by new ones. It takes about 3-4 weeks and looks very uncomfortable. We were tempted to go and pluck out the old feathers just to get the process over with! While they are molting, the penguins can't go into the ocean, so they generally stand in streams or creeks so they have access to water to drink while their feathers fall out and litter the stream. And we got to walk through it (it's not as pleasant as it sounds).

Anyway, the view from the top of the hill is pretty incredible. There are tussock grasses in front and behind the penguins, then a sea of penguins of various colors, and some are near and some are far away. I believe there are 80,000 breeding pairs in the colony we saw today. That's why we call it a penguin landscape. You can take a photo and have nothing but penguins in it, yet they are different enough and arrange themselves differently that it still makes an interesting shot.

Unfortunately, Greg's camera died while we were on top of the hill, so we took only a few shots before putting away Lori's camera as well (we didn't want to push it and wind up with two non-functioning cameras, and we think his camera might be back to life – several others had similar problems with all the rain). Then we had to leave that site because we were freezing. With the rain pouring down, our gloves were soaked through – we could make a fist and see the water dripping out – and it was too cold to just sit there in the rain. So we hiked back down the hill to get to the edge of the colony (at the level of the penguins) and then return to the landing site. Every time we land, I think "What are we going to do for the next 3 or 4 hours out here?" Yet we always seem to be one of the last groups in the zodiac, and today was no exception. We walked around at sea level and then Greg discovered that a King penguin was following us. So we turned and watched him (her?) for a while – Greg got some video with his GoPro camera that we'll probably post when we get home. Then we had to walk through a chess board filled with aggressive fur seals and penguin groups to get back to the landing site to return to the ship for lunch and the afternoon landing. It was a hairy walk and we encountered several unpleasant seals.

We took our zodiac back to ship and had lunch – though the main course was seafood paella so of course I couldn't eat that! Then we were to be among the first group of 50 to go ashore to Prion Island. This is a place with 30 pairs of breeding albatross and they say it is an amazing site. So of course we were close to the front of the line when our group was called. The first two zodiacs with passengers went out, and then they determined that the ship's anchor wasn't holding so they had to reposition the ship. The result was that we were much closer to the landing site, which was a very good thing as the wind was blowing around 40 knots (close to 40 mph). This results in lots of sea spray in the zodiacs. Several people had the equivalent of several buckets of water dumped over their heads on the way to shore. The waves were going strong, and we were bouncing all over the place...it was the most "exciting" ride so far (though I could do with a bit more boredom in my zodiac rides, thanks!)

Anyway, we got to the island which had even more fur seals – moms, dads, and pups. The babies are still cute, especially the really little ones, but even they are aggressive. The expedition staff says they're just born ornery and we believe it. We picked up a stick to keep them at by and proceeded with our group up a wooden boardwalk up the hill which has been built to get people up to view the nesting sites. There were several wandering albatross on nests right next to the boardwalk so that was cool. And at the top, there were about a dozen maybe 50 yards away and in clear sight. Of course, it was pretty windy up there as well, and because of the limited number of people allowed at any one time, we had only about 15 minutes at the top. However, even more spectacular than the albatross in our opinion was the view of the bay where the ship was anchored and on the other side of the island. We were able to see two glaciers, snow-capped mountains, beautiful blue waters (multiple colors of blue), and pretty grasses. It's just a gorgeous landscape – one of the nicest we've seen so far.

I'd say we could post some photos tonight but Greg's asleep! Our wake-up call isn't until 6:30am tomorrow, and we have already anchored in our new destination – Fortuna Bay on the northeast side of South Georgia Island. We have 5 more full days of landings here – and lots more fur seals we are told. But tomorrow, in addition to seeing more birds and penguins, we are going on a 3.3 mile walk that is the last portion of the Shackleton hike from when he navigated from Elephant Island to Stromness Harbord to save his crew back in the 1900's. I'm told our hike will be easier than theirs was...

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.

Crossing the Antarctic Polar Front

Today we were on board the ship all day, continuing our journey to South Georgia Island. It takes nearly 3 days to get from the Falklands to South Georgia, and we expect to reach the northwest end of the island after breakfast. We may make a landing in the late afternoon / early evening, but it depends on weather and speed conditions between now and then.

The seas have been pretty calm I think - some wave action but nothing terribly extreme so far. We've been lucky to have no seasickness symptoms though some on board have, and others are on medication to fight it. Once we're around South Georgia, we will be traveling down the northeast coast of the island, which is in much more protected waters since there is a 9,000 foot mountain range that goes down the middle of the island. We have six full days of landings, not including whatever we do on Saturday. They say this is the Serengeti of Seabirds in terms of the sheer number of birds we can expect to see.

Earlier this afternoon (it's now 9:45pm), we crossed the Antarctic Polar Front. This is the region - it's about 60 miles wide - where the cold water from Antarctica meets the warmer water from the tropics. The water temperature drops, as does the air temperature. The air temp yesterday was about 36 degrees - certainly less balmy than the Falklands! The water temperature dropped from about 8-10 degrees Celsius to 0-2 degrees Celsius. Because of the mixing of the cold and warm water, there is an incredible amount of life in the water, meaning lots of food for the birds and seals that feed on it. It should be a good day for viewing birds and marine life from the ship tomorrow. Whales and dolphins have been spotted (but not by us just yet) and we're anxious to see more.

Today we attended a number of more lectures / slide shows. We just returned from a slide show the staff put together where every person on board ship is invited to share some of their images from the Falklands. There will be another similar show after South Georgia and again after Antarctica. It was interesting to see other peoples' images and gave us lots of ideas for the photography days ahead. We submitted the same images we posted yesterday.