Date: 7th Jan, 2011
The ship headed further south and the winds picked up quickly. Our next stop was Gold harbor which is located close to the south eastern tip of the island. It has a good combination of the usual south georgian wildlife - fur seals, elephant seals, king and gentoo penguins. This is the first place where we encountered the huge elephant seals lazing around the beach.
We had two options, either follow Damien to visit the Gentoo penguin colonies or follow our ornithologist Pat to see some Albatross nesting up in the hills. We decided to go up the Albatross route. It was a steep climb over loose rocks on a bright day. We intentionally lagged behind the rest of the gang and took some nice shots of the meadows with glaciers in the background. Soon enough we came across some albatrosses seated graciously in the grass meadows. We rested on a steep cliff filled with tussock grass to watch the lightmantled sooty and giant albatross flying nearby. Unfortunately we could not locate their nests even after trying to follow them with our binoculars for about half an hour. We were running out of time for the last zodiac and had to head back, though we did not want to. We could easily spend two more hours in this gorgeous place. At the beach we got some cool shots of the big blobs of elephant seals lying there snorting over each other. This harbor also has abundance of king penguins. We had some close encounters with Skuas and baby seals while waiting for our turn to board the zodiac back to the ship - a couple of Skuas approached Trinity apparently interested in bitting her boots.
In the afternoon, the plan was to visit the Royal bay but due to strong winds the captain could not secure a safe anchor for the ship. We headed further north to the calm waters near Ocean harbor. During this stretch we seemed to have crossed the St. Andrews bay, the largest king penguin colony, which I badly wanted to visit and due to strong winds it was not included as a part of the plan. Meanwhile, the kayakers on the ship were getting restless since they haven't had a chance to head out even once in their kayaks. Ocean harbor seemed like a perfect location with great weather for kayaking. We booked this trip about 2 months ago and all the 16 coveted spots for kayaking were already taken. We had to stay with the rest of the gang and go ashore ocean harbor. This landing site was not quite different from the rest of the sites we visited earlier except that it is an abandoned whaling station with lots of elephant seals on the beach.
We had an option to follow the guides on two scenic walks but we decided to take it easy and head out on our own. This is the first fully equipped whaling station that even had a railroad for transporting goods. We could see some remnants of the rail engines that the fur seals have gladly made it their home now. We decided to head up the hill and we were greeted by an aggressive fur seal which came charging at us on the way and it was hard to convince it otherwise. Fur seals can bite especially during the end of the breeding season. The male seals can bite us out of stress when we approach their territory during the last few days of the breeding season when they haven't had a chance to find a female seal for mating. Looks like the general techniques to face the bears in Yosemite seem to work well to defend against fur seals. We came across a ship wreck that was supposedly in great condition after 80yrs of staying stagnated in the bay. We headed up the hill, enjoying the last bit of sun and got a rare glimpse of some reindeers before heading back down. This time we just followed our courageous guide Damien who saved us from the fur seals while listening to his stories when he lived/worked in South Georgia about 30yrs ago.
In the past two days, we have been getting some good exercise hiking around the bays in s. georgia. It has been 3 busy days around this island with absolutely no time for anything else on the ship. We had unnecessarily prepared ourselves with lots of books, computer/card games, dvds, etc to keep ourselves busy during the trip.
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