We leave Stanley at 19h00, and head towards South Georgia. It should have taken us a couple of days to get there; however high seas and strong winds slowed progress, and we added nearly a day. The time on board is spent eating…eating and more eating interspersed by interesting lectures and thorough biosecurity cleaning procedures prior to our first zodiac landing on the island.
Our first stop is Prion Island- best known for its wandering albatross colony. There is a boardwalk built to a couple of look outs and we are lucky enough that one albatross has chosen to nest right by the boardwalk. Some of the local fur seals were not happy to see visitors and attempted to chase us away!! The wandering albatross is the largest albatross with wings spanning up to 3.5m!! Its special to see them gliding around –and even a couple’s mating display.
Our second stop in the Bay of Isles is Salisbury Plains. This forever-expanse of beach with jagged mountain tops and glaciers as a backdrop; is home to the second largest colony of King Penguins. They are beauties to behold- their sharp, crisp yellow and orange colouring is so striking. We have a winding walk through the plains, in between the angry fur seals and inquisitive Kings, towards the main colony.
There are many penguins that are moulting- these penguins cannot fish as their feathers are not waterproof at this stage. This means that they attempt to remain as still as possible to conserve energy during the moulting- which takes up to 2 months to complete.
A sea of crisp coloured Kings great us by the main colony and dotted in among them are brown fur balls – these are the penguin chicks, which are now pretty large. Some are moulting and gaining their first waterproof feathers. The chicks are nothing like their royal looking parents- and many years ago, the first explorers thought that they were a different species!
As we are making the best of the beautiful sunny weather we have on our first day- we do a third activity for the day- before we “run away” from the storm that’s hot on our heels. This is a zodiac cruise around Prince Olav Harbour- one of the most recent whaling stations on the island. It opened in 1904. As we cruise around we get some history of whaling and sealing in the area and note the sheer magnitude of this operation by the size of this station. Before returning to the ship we visit a seal colony that has a male “blondie” – a light beige coloured seal. 1/1000 fur seals are this colour- and being the dominant male on this beach he has also sown some of those seeds around!
