Date: Jan 5th, 2011
Sunrise: 3.01am
Sunset: 20.05
The ship engines picked up full speed overnight and by sunrise we were at North eastern tip of south georgia. Based on some reading in the library the previous night, I had discovered that Bird island is like the wildlife paradise in South Georgia with lots and lots of varieties of birds. Sadly, this island is off limits for tourists and currently occupied by British Antarctic Survey folks for research purposes. The next destination on my mind was St. Andrews Bay which is the largest king penguin rookery in the world. Here you can see millions of penguin pairs with snow capped mountains in the background. About 2-3 yrs ago we saw an amazing picture of king penguins at St. Andrews Bay and fell in love with this place. We decided our first itinerary to Antarctica should definitely include South Georgia for the amazing wildlife found down here. The wildlife such as penguins and seals have predators in water and none on land. As a result they are not afraid of humans watching them on land which provides great proximity to wildlife in the southern oceans.
Today was our first day in South Georgia and we were quite excited to check it out especially the king penguin colony that was planned for the afternoon. It was a cloudy day and the first outing was planned for a zodiac cruise to watch the penguins, albatross, petrels and seals along the beaches in Elsahul. We started out great but soon it started drizzling followed by light rain but we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It was great to see the seals playing all around our zodiacs. It was a treat watching the king penguins majestically standing at the beach in big groups. This was the first time we saw king penguins in such large numbers. Apart from penguins and seals which are commonly found in South Georgia, we could see storm petrels, black browed albatross, lightmantled sooty, ducks and terns. The ocean had good amount of floating kelps and our experienced guides navigated carefully among them. At times they switched off the engines of the zodiacs and we could hear the sounds of all the abundant wildlife around us. Unfortunately the rain did spoil most of my pictures leaving me wanting for more.
After lunch we boarded our zodiacs again to land at Salisbury plain. This is the second largest king penguin colony after St. Andrews bay. This is one amazing place with so many king penguins. A huge plain with groups and groups of king penguins - I believe there are more than 500k pairs on this single bay - and fur seals. The penguin chicks are brown in color and are generally found in the middle of the pack protected by the parent birds around them. The penguin chicks are very curious and completely not afraid of approaching us. These are brown in color and were yet to shed their skin in preparation for the upcoming winter. [Interesting was to notice that the chicks seem to grow in disproportional way - sometimes they have adult size feet and "wings" along with a small body - quite odd.] The whole trip would have been worth it just to visit this penguin colony. We had never experienced such a beautiful place during any of our previous travels. We landed at the beach flooded with fur seals and to walk about half a km to get to the actual dense colony of king penguins. There was a nice glacier in the background and the light was amazing for photographs. Literally, my fingers were engaged clicking pictures for 3hrs at full speed and we were the last to leave this place after constant nagging from our guides trying to chase us before the last zodiac leaves for the ship. We got some great shots and wish we had more time to actually sit back and enjoy the scenery.
Andy: Srinath couldn't literally stop clicking, this was amazing. I had never seen him so excited about taking pictures before.. Guess buying the new lens was really worth it after all.
The ship crew announced an iceberg sighting competition - the person who would guess the day/time closest to our first ice berg sighting gets a bottle of wine. In no time we saw a big list of contenders with guesses that spread over 4-5 day period. Even the Russian crew got excited about it and registered their guesses. We came across the first ice berg at around 9pm according to the report from the captain at the bridge. The winner was proudly announced during dinner that evening.
Got a good taste for South Georgia on our first day and we were so glad that we still have 3 more days to go on this beautiful island. Everybody seemed very happy with these excursions and could not stop talking about all their experiences with the wildlife. We decided to celebrate our visit to S. Georgia, at dinner, with some wine that we had picked up in Ushuaia. The bar crew were very friendly and opened our wine bottle with no additional corkage fee. Cannot wait to find out what is in store for the next day…
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