Ship Day 6: South Georgia

December 8, 2016                  (reprinted from allisonwanderssome.wordpress.com)

Oh, the 4:37 am wake up call came early. Nate apologized for waking us up a few minutes earlier than scheduled but the sun had risen completely and was casting a glorious golden glow on the aptly named Gold Harbor and he wanted us all to have the opportunity to see it in its glory. There were many sleepy heads stumbling around the deck but no one complained once they saw the view. The first shuttle run into shore started at 6am and the last one back at 12pm so I took my time layering up as I knew I wouldn’t be staying ashore 6 hours!

We landed at the far end of the beach and we were all grabbing for our cameras as soon as the boat stopped moving. Nate had to remind us we had 6 hours to take pictures and could we please give him 3 minutes for a safety briefing. Oops. Standing on the beach was like being cast in a National Geographic movie. Thousands of King penguins grouped in either huge clumps and seemed to just stand still while small splinter groups had an agenda and were off on their little missions going somewhere. Hundreds of Elephant seals of all sizes were scattered across the beach: the baby “weaners” which had just finished their 3 weeks of nursing and lay about snoozing; teenagers who would gather enough energy to pretend joust a bit in between their snoozing; and the big daddy adult males which charged any other male who was attempting to cut in on their harem, before collapsing to the ground snoozing to refresh their energy.  We had to keep our 5 meters distance from the adult bulls but it was impossible to do so with the penguins and seal pups. In fact, the pups were so curious we had to either fend them off with a stick, or just let them suck on our boots!



I didn’t make the full 6 hours on land, more like 3 1/2 hours. My fingers were just starting to turn numb and it seemed like I was starting to take the same photos over again so I returned to the ship for a nice hot cup of tea, a shower and a sandwich. A bit of hand-laundry then sorting through my 235 photos and starting this blog entry took up the rest of the morning. All the passengers were back on board by noon and so we set sail for our next stop: Royal Harbor.

Hot cocoa and a view after Gold Harbour

Royal Harbor is known for it’s humongous beach with 10’s of 1000’s of king penguins set on the leading edge of a receding glacier…but we didn’t go there. The swell was too rough for us to attempt shore landings so instead we all set of in the zodiac boats for a couple of hours of near-coast cruising around the corner where there was a large Macaroni penguin colony. Macaronis are a bit unusual as a penguin species as they nest in remote cliff faces, so are seldom seen, and that they are mean. That’s unfortunate as they are the funny-looking ones with large yellow tufts of hair like glued-on eyebrows. I was surprised to even get one good photo of one from the rocking boat on max telephoto as I could hardly keep a penguin in the frame in the heavy swell, so I was pleased with my efforts. We cruised until we got chilled to the bone. The wind had picked up and blew ice chunks down the harbor towards us; sweet Dave, the bartender met us on deck with hot cocoa on our return!



A special event was celebrated on board tonight – 2 of the guests got married by the captain just before dinner and we all attended! They had met 15 years (and 2 days ago) on an Antarctic cruise and despite the intervening years and 3 children, never married so they decided to finally make it official. Wedding photos were taken earlier on the beach amongst all the penguins and Nate and Julia once again played some beautiful music to accompany the ceremony. The crew all dressed in their white button-downs, and had elegantly decorated the sky lounge for the occasion. They even made a gigantic wedding cake that served us all after dinner. After our turkey dinner, that is. It is Thanksgiving day, after all!