Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
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.
On The Road – arrieve – South Georgia, part 3Post + Comments (23)
Pictures from our first landing in South Georgia in Grytviken, plus a few extra seals.
Grytviken was established as a Norwegian whaling station in 1904, and is still described as the largest “settlement” on South Georgia. There’s a post office and a museum for the cruise ships that stop there, but they are only open during the summer; the people who work there go back to England in April, as do most of the scientists working around the island. No one lives on South Georgia permanently.
This was the first place we were able to go ashore, although until the last minute it looked like the winds were going to keep us from landing. The ship had to be cleared by the South Georgian government inspector first, to make sure we didn’t have any contaminants (or rodents) aboard, and she also checked each of us before we got in the zodiacs—our boots, our jackets, our gear.
South Georgia has no mammals other than seals. After a long campaign, rodents brought by sailors were finally eradicated in 2018 after more than 200 years (one of the reasons for the ship inspection before we could land there.) There also used to be herds of reindeer, which were introduced by Norwegian whalers, but they were so destructive to the native grasses and plants that they also had to be killed.
On The Road – arrieve – South Georgia, part 2Post + Comments (18)
I went to Antarctica in 2018 and enjoyed every minute of what I believed was a once in a lifetime adventure. It’s so far away, and so expensive to get there, that most people never get to have that experience and I appreciated how lucky I was.
One thing I regretted was that I wasn’t able to do the one-week extension to South Georgia after seeing Antarctica. I was still working then and I couldn’t spare the extra vacation days or the money. But every time I have seen pictures of South Georgia in the years since or talked to people who’ve been there, I’ve always been sorry that I hadn’t just said screw it and gone when I had the opportunity.
Then last year I got a notice of unclaimed funds belonging to my late mother. And I had a cruise credit from my trip last Christmas through the Suez Canal from Athens to Saudi Arabia because all of the Egyptian ports were taken off the itinerary due to the war in Gaza. Neither was a huge amount of money, but when I saw that the cruise company had trips to Antarctica that included South Georgia, this time I did say screw it. I took the rest of the money out of my IRA, which of course you shouldn’t do, but did I mention Screw it?
I still have several hundred pictures I haven’t processed yet, but here is some of what I have of South Georgia, which is absolutely magical. I am so glad I went. And yeah, I’d love to go back….
I spent Christmas in Rio (it rained three of the four days I was there, so not a lot of interesting pictures to share), then flew to Santiago, where the tour started. We left early the next morning, taking two charter flights to Puerto Williams, on the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego, where we boarded the ship.
We were scheduled to sail for three days across the Scotia Sea to reach South Georgia, which is really out in the middle of nowhere. We made excellent time though, and arrived in the early afternoon on the third day. So after some negotiations with the South Georgia authorities, we were able to arrange an extra excursion and do a zodiac cruise in Elsehul Bay that afternoon.
There were fur seals and elephant seals lounging on the beach, penguins waddling on the rocks and porpoising through the water, and a colony of albatrosses up on the mountain. I don’t have enough adjectives to describe how magnificent it was. Someone took a picture of me on the zodiac with a camera in my hand and a huge grin on my face, and I still smile when I think of it.
Here are some king penguins on the beach. They are mostly found in South Georgia, so I had never seen them before.
On The Road – arrieve – South Georgia, part 1Post + Comments (20)