Another World (part 5)

A day in South Georgia

After two days at rough sea, we saw the snow-capped peaks of South Georgia. Gracious seabirds were gliding effortlessly along the ship.

The colours of the turquoise blue waters and the bright green hills in the distance were breathtaking and we spotted our first King Penguin swimming next to the ship...

The second part of our trip to Antarctica started with a stunning morning at Gold Harbour where we were welcomed by a bunch of colourful King Penguins! 

We honestly could not believe our eyes… 

There was this endless beach surrounded by majestic mountains and gorgeous glaciers, covered by thousands of King Penguins, Gentoo Penguins, Southern Elephant Seals, Antarctic Fur Seals, Albatrosses, Petrels, the endemic South Georgia Pipit - the only songbird of Antarctica - and so many other seabirds... 

It was extraordinary, magical, jaw-dropping! 

We were wandering around the beach literally surrounded by these cute fellows and felt like kids in a lollipop shop! 

King Penguins, the second largest species of penguins, are curious fellows who come very close, look you in the eyes (or rather stare at you!) and you feel like they are trying to communicate with you. 

At this moment the only thing you want to do is bend and try to understand them and have an actual conversation with a penguin! 

They even follow you around in their funny way and it feels like you are marching together with these cuties....

I think we were their entertainment for the day and not the opposite! 

Some penguins were simply walking and looked so majestic and elegant! 

Others looked like they were dancing, hugging, arguing, talking or simply fishing for lunch! 

There were also chicks surrounded by their parents, baby Fur Seals playing together and huge Elephant Seals moving around with an astonishing speed…

The view and the noise of all these animals which looked like the Antarctic version of Noah’s Ark was something we would never forget. You literally do not know where to look, there is something happening everywhere at the same time…

We were told by the expedition team that King Penguins find their mates using their specific calls, which is helpful considering the dress code - they all look alike! We also learnt that because of their large size, King Penguin chicks take more than a year to moult before they are ready to go to sea. 

Moulting simply means replacing their fluffy brown coat, which is their juvenile plumage, with a more robust waterproof ‘swimming suit’. 

During their moulting time, the chicks form groups watched by a few adult birds, a little bit like a penguin daycare, and the parents alternate to go fishing and come back to feed their chicks. 

It is the first of many moltings. Unlike most other seabirds, during their lifetime penguins undergo an annual catastrophic moult where they lose and replace all of their feathers at once. This will explain why some of the penguins you will see in Antarctica look like your cat’s or dog’s favourite stuffed toy! 

Our second stop on South Georgia Island was a hike at Godthul Bay ("Good Cove" in Norwegian), a former whaling floating factory. 

There were some remaining whale bones on the beach but luckily this era is over… 

There were also lots of cute baby Fur Seals sleeping on the high thick tussock grass, the Antarctica equivalent of jungle vegetation... 

A small waterfall and some alien-looking orange algae added to the idyllic landscape. 

The beautiful colours at dusk were the icing on the cake of what was probably the most magical day of our trip. 

At this point we were all running out of superlatives…

At sea

Unfortunately, happy moments are followed by challenges and we had to leave South Georgia earlier than expected because of the incoming storm that we wanted to avoid.  There is an old maxim that nothing in Antarctica is predictable except its unpredictability! Unfortunately, everything in Antarctica is weather dependent! The whisky toast for Shackleton (who died and was buried in South Georgia) in the evening that day was much needed to help a tiny bit with the disappointment we felt. The next four days at sea were quite difficult and we were all trying to fight the monotony and keep ourselves busy the best we could attending lectures, playing Scrabble and Rock Paper Scissors games, writing Haiku poems, playing the piano, sorting our pictures and watching movies. ‘Happy Feet’ and ‘The Last Husky’ were a must as two expedition team guys had participated in their making and told us interesting stories about it!

The wind speed reached over 80 knots (or about 148 km per hour)… The swells made us walk like penguins holding on to anything we could get hold of! Hours at sea felt endless…The good news at the end was that we managed to escape the serious storm and were heading to the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, our last destination...