On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
arrieve
These pictures are all from St. Andrew’s Bay, our last landing in South Georgia. It’s home to what may be the largest colony of king penguins in the world—about 150,000 birds. You simply cannot imagine that there could be that many penguins.
A pair of kings.
This river, which is glacial meltwater running from the mountains to the bay, is lined with penguins as far as you can see. They made me think of pilgrims coming to bathe in a sacred river.
Even the most slender penguins appear kind of stocky when they’re standing still or waddling along, but in fact they have very long, flexible necks. Which is why in any picture of a group of penguins you’ll probably have at least one that appears to have no head, like the penguin on the far right.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!
Penguins are awkward, if adorable, on land, compared to their speed and grace in the water. But they never appear more ridiculous to my human eyes than when they belly flop on the beach to take a breather. I will never not find this hilarious.
A juvenile penguin is the only one still standing while all the grownups have crashed.
The penguin just in front of the youngster looks like another juvenile that is almost finished molting into its adult feathers.
A molting adult. Unsurprisingly, with 150,000 penguins in residence, everything in St. Andrew’s is covered with feathers. Including us, by the time we left.
In this picture you can see the feathers all over the rocks—and on the poor seal who made the mistake of hanging out with penguins.
Finally, a picture of Elephant Island, which we passed on our way to Antarctica. We weren’t scheduled to land, but the captain had hoped to bring the ship close enough to allow us to see Point Wild (named for Frank Wild), where there is a memorial to the Endurance crew that lived there for four and a half months before Shackleton’s return, and Luis Pardo, the Chilean captain who succeeded in rescuing them after two previous attempts had failed.
Unfortunately, that side of the island was completely fogged in; you couldn’t see land at all from the ship. But when we sailed around to the other side of the island, it was clear and sunny.
Doug
Gorgeous! Especially the last one of Elephant Island.
I think that I would always find fwumped penguins hilarious too.
Baud
What a wonderful trip.
Gloria DryGarden
I love these photos of penguins at the spa..
YY_Sima Qian
I did a double take, because I think I have the exact same photo as #2.
J.
Love the photos and the captions!
stinger
Fabulous set of photos! And great text! Penguins always bring a foolish smile to my face–and that was even before I knew they belly-flopped to rest. They look like they’re playing possum. Also, love the penguin with no head! And the picture of Elephant Island is beautiful. Thank you!
Torrey
Really appreciate this virtual trip to South Georgia. And penguins are always delightful.
Melissa M
Lovely picture of the kings! And when I see that, I find it hard to believe those are all feathers.
MCat
Penguin feathers! What marvelous creatures they are. Thank you so much for sharing these wonderful photos.
Steve in the ATL
Love looking at penguin colonies! Not such a fan of smelling them, though.
anitamargarita
Thanks for sharing these wonderful photos all week.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: What device and OS are you using? None of my Apple stuff lets me smell these at all!
WaterGirl
These have been really great, arrieve!
Everybody else, please think about submitting something, and for those of you who have been thinking about it, please do it!
WaterGirl
Oh, and i just added South Georgia as a tag, so they will be easy to find by thru the search bar up top on every page.
I try to do that for every set, but sometimes I forget. So if you submit a set, and I don’t add a tag for yours, please remind me!
YY_Sima Qian
@WaterGirl: Are you doing that for all of the South Georgia posts from the different jackals over the years?
Steve in the ATL
@WaterGirl:
Great–can’t wait to share photos from my vacation to Valdosta and Macon!
arrieve
@Steve in the ATL:
Fortunately the St. Andrew’s penguins were not as odoriferous as you might think. Maybe because they were scattered over such a wide area.
Thanks to all for the many kind comments. I’m glad I got to convey a little of the magic of South Georgia.
Here’s a video from St. Andrew’s so you can see penguins in action.
YY_Sima Qian
@arrieve: I don’t know. During my trip we had to climb a ridge before overseeing St. Andrew’s. I heard the penguins, then smelled them, before I saw them.
dr. luba
“You simply cannot imagine that there could be that many penguins.”
Actually, I can, having been to Magdalena Island, where there are about 150.000 adults and penguin chicks.
Quite noisy…..Magellanic penguins, also called jackass penguins, bray. Loudly.
S Cerevisiae
Thanks so much for all the great photos of a truly far away place. Amazing.
KSinMA
Thanks for the photos and the travelogue!
WaterGirl
@YY_Sima Qian: I didn’t know there were other South Georgia OTR posts over the years. So I just marked these three.
Okay so I filtered by only OTR posts, and then searched for South Georgia. Nothing else came up. So if there have been other South Georgia posts, they haven’t been named as such.
So it’s just these three.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: Giving you the side-eye. :-)