Spectacular South Georgia

After the 3 long days at sea, we’re literally in the middle of nowhere in the Southern Ocean. King Edward Point on the island of South Georgia, population in the summer, about 20. The wakeup this morning gave us our first taste of the sub-Antarctic. South Georgia has some of the worst weather of just about anywhere, but this morning we were greeted by sun poking out, glaciers, icebergs, abundant fur seals in the bay swimming past the ship, and the old whaling village of Grytviken at the head of the bay.

Government of South Georgia officials came on board to conduct a biosecurity inspection – the biosecurity of this most special place that contains the highest density of wildlife on the planet is particularly sensitive this year due to an outbreak of Avian Flu transported from South America by migratory birds in the southern spring. What does biosecurity mean? Anything that’s outerwear or gear has to be completely clean and free of any foreign material before off ship excursions and that’s right down to seeds stuck in the mesh of a backpack, or tiny crumbs of dirt in between the treads of one’s boots. In addition to the biosecurity inspection, they also stamped our passports since we’ll be officially entering their territory. This will definitely be one of the rarest stamps I’ll ever get.

After all of the formalities, Zodiacs were unloaded from the ship to take us to shore in Grytviken. While watching this process, seals howling and singing onshore were clearly heard from the ship.

Sadly, this seal didn’t make it back from his last swim.

Our first stop was at the historic Grytviken cemetery.

We had to wade through a forest of fur seals to get to the cemetery. But, taking care not to get too close to them – especially as there are strict rules not to get closer than 5 metres to the animals due to Avian Flu. Why the restrictions on people for a “bird flu”? Well, not for the worry of people contracting it, which is possible but rare – but rather to prevent humans picking it up from an infected animal and moving the germs along to somewhere else on their boots or gear.

This is where the famous Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton rests. We raised a toast to him with a shot of Jamesons at his gravestone.

It was hard not to take too many photos of the fur seals that were everywhere amongst the tussock grass.

Again, due to Avian Flu and to minimize the risk of close encounters with the seals, we weren’t able to walk around the cove to the village, but had to get back in the Zodiac for a water shuttle. More fur seals yowling and lounging greeted us at the next landing spot.

We pulled up right beside the derelict remains of a very busy whaling station from the first half of the 20th century. It has been shuttered since 1966.

There are a few “attractions” that are seasonally staffed in Grytviken – a museum and post office. I stopped first at a smaller sub-museum dedicated to the James Caird, the boat that Shackleton and some of his men drove from Antarctica after being stuck for over a year in the ice. It is a tremendous story and quite fascinating how they actually made it.

More whaling station remains as I walked around and up towards the Norwegian Anglican Church, which was prefabricated in Norway in 1913 and reconstructed on site.

The upper level had this adorable penguin stuffie left behind in memory of someone dearly missed. There was also a sign encouraging visitors to pull the ropes to ring the church’s bells, which I did. 🙂

The church was still decorated for Christmas – amazing considering the location.

Outside again, I popped into the museum and looked around, and also heard a presentation by one of the staffers whose grandfather had actually worked in the whaling station many, many years ago!

As I headed back to the zodiac, more seals lounged in front of these derelict whaling ships.

Back to the ship and back onboard for lunch.

We saw more icebergs as we headed out of the bay. These bergs seemed attractive at the time but we’ll certainly have our fill of icebergs over the next week and a half.

After lunch we ventured around the corner to Stromness and Leith, other former whaling stations – which was nestled below some glaciated peaks.

Here’s a sample of what the boot check looked like at the beginning of each excursion – picks at the ready to get rid of any tiny debris. In addition to the waterproof parka and waterproof pants (you supply your own – some people wore ski pants but I wore simple rain pants as it wasn’t really that cold) they supply insulated rubber boots for landings, as you are stepping into sea water that could be up to knee deep.

We toured around the bay in the Zodiac and saw many seals, penguins swimming, icebergs, verdant grassy slopes, and dramatic skies.

Afterwards, we disembarked and I hiked up through a sea of seals and many gentoo and king penguins towards Shackleton Waterfall. Not only was it awesome to walk amongst the thousands of critters in their own domain, it was especially nice to get in a proper walk after being on the ship for the last 3 days!

Of course, these guys and gals were just adorable. Especially the king penguins.

Here’s Shackleton Waterfall, which was the last obstacle that him and his men descended completely covered in snow after traversing nearly 50 kilometres of steep rock and glaciers.

This got them to the first humans they’d seen in over a year, which was down at the whaling station in the distance.

Some snow flurries blew in while I was at one of the creek crossings on the hike.

More adorable gentoo penguins.

And a fur seal saying goodbye as I headed back to the ship for dinner.

Next morning we were headed out for a Zodiac tour in Hercules Bay. What a gorgeous morning. We are getting really lucky with the weather here.

Unfortunately we couldn’t land here, but to be honest I didn’t see too many places where a landing would be physically feasible due to the steep shoreline, but we had our first views of macaroni penguins and of course more seals.

There were some beautiful icebergs in the bay, including this one that was covered in penguins, some of them being very silly.

And this one, which resembled a ship, and was almost the same size as one.

Before too long, it was time to get back on the ship for lunch and heading south along the coast to our next stop, of course passing numerous icebergs backdropped by dramatic peaks rising close to 3000 metres in elevation.

Our destination for the afternoon is St Andrews Bay – home to several hundred thousand king penguins.

I won’t comment too much and let the pictures speak for themselves. This site was restricted from landing due to HPAI ravaging the elephant seals in the area, and we could see many corpses from the water. It’s probably a good thing that we weren’t allowed to land anyway, as at least from a distance we could look past the death instead of having it right in our faces. So although we weren’t amongst them, we did get to view from a small distance offshore, king penguins as far as the eye could see, including many fluffy brown chicks.

There were some kings hanging out on rocks at the far north end of the beach, that we were able to get quite close to for some photos. At this point in the trip I found myself wishing that I had brought a proper dSLR or mirrorless camera with a good telephoto lens instead of just my iPhone.

Back at the ship after an absolutely amazing afternoon at St Andrews Bay, our daily recap/briefing contained a screenshot of the weather from Windy.com, presented by our Expedition Leader, Daven. The forecast for Friday, the day after tomorrow, looked fairly grim for crossing over to Antarctica but at least it was the end of the storm and not right in the middle of it. Some people were very anxious about this. Originally the trip itinerary was to spend 2 days in South Georgia and 3 in Antarctica, but we spent 3 days in South Georgia. I wonder if that was because the weather was so good here and looking so bad to the south !

The next morning at Gold Harbour was even better than the previous morning. Again, no landing, but a beautiful, leisurely paced zodiac tour in a glacier backdropped bay with tons of penguins and more seals.

Some of the other activities one could do from the ship included kayaking and stand up paddleboarding – I got this group of kayakers passing some icebergs on the uncharacteristically calm and warm day.

Around these striking rock pinnacles were more seals – some of them blonde.

Couldn’t get enough of the icebergs on this spectacular morning.

After the outing, I went back to my room and enjoyed an espresso on the balcony while I watched the rest of the Zodiacs return to the ship.

Before we started moving onwards, here’s me on the bow.

And a snowy sheathbill posing.

We traversed again further south.

More icebergs – I thought this one looked like a submarine.

As we pulled into Cooper Bay, a 22 degree halo warned us of impending bad weather – or did it?

It was still beautiful out right now.

Last Zodiac cruise on South Georgia. So many chinstrap penguins.

All of the features heading up the slopes between the grass aren’t rocks.. they’re penguins.

As we left this resting seal and headed back to the ship, high cloud started to move in and the wind picked up.

We headed out further south through a spectacular Iceberg Alley. It was incredible. I have a time lapse video of going through this area but unfortunately I can only post images in this blog.

Passing Drygalski Fjord.

As we headed out south beyond Cape Disappointment, we said goodbye to South Georgia and settled in for another couple of days at sea. Hopefully we’re missing the purple and blue part of the weather map. South Georgia, simply a stunning and amazing place on this planet. Despite the HPAI restrictions I feel very fortunate to have seen what we did in such perfect weather!

Next stop – The White Continent