01.09.11
Fortuna Bay
This morning we took a hike inland to see another king penguin colony. We also spotted some reindeer!
Abandoned whaling station at Grytviken
Internet is getting spottier, so I’m uploading these in a smaller size than the others. Hopefully you can still get the idea.
We visited the ruins of an old whaling station at Grytviken today. Definitely a change in scenery from all of the unspoilt beaches and cliff faces we’ve been looking at!
This place was an active whale-processing factory for more than 60 years. Operations ceased in 1964, but very little clean up has been done. The ruins are dangerous: full of asbestos, flammable materials, and sheet metal that has been known to go flying in high winds.
On the plus side, the place has been completely recolonized by fur seals. Which is awesome, because this is the very facility that allowed humans to hunt fur seals nearly to extinction in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They’ve since made an excellent recovery.
It’s also home to penguins, birds, and about 20 humans. The humans work for the British Antarctic Survey, govern the South Georgia Islands (which mostly means regulating passenger and fishing vessels, since no other humans live on the islands), do restoration work on South Georgia and surrounding islands, and manage a museum and gift shop that caters to the 50-60 cruise ships that come through every summer. No one stays on the island for longer than 2 years at a stretch.
01.08.11
Macaroni penguins climbing
The video’s bumpy because I took it from the zodiac, but you can get an idea of how they climb (hilariously).
Hercules Bay
We slept in this morning, then went out on a zodiac cruise around Hercules Bay. The bay is home to a colony of Macaroni penguins, as well as many fur seals.
Macaroni penguins are cliff-dwellers, and their most distinctive feature is their yellow crest. European explorers gave them the name “Macaroni” after a men’s hairstyle of the day that was a popular target for satire.
For more background, see: Rictor Norton, “The Macaroni Club: Homosexual Scandals in 1772″, Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook, 19 December 2004, updated 11 June 2005 http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/macaroni.htm.
Also, there’s a line in “Yankee Doodle” about this hairstyle:
Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony
Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni
Enough history… here are the macaroni penguins and fur seals of Hercules Bay!
King penguins coming out of the water
From St. Andrew’s Bay, yesterday at sunrise:
01.07.11
Photos from Gold Harbour
This afternoon we landed at Gold Harbour, which is home to a ridiculous number of elephant seals, as well as king and gentoo penguins.
Photos from St. Andrew’s Bay
It turned out that getting up at 3am to see the penguin colony at dawn was the right call. The regularly scheduled shore excursions (at a more humane 8am) got called off after about 20 minutes due to high winds coming down off the glacier.
I took a bunch of videos of seal fights and penguins being silly, and I’ll be posting some later.
Now we’re gearing up for another shore landing, at Gold Harbour!
Sunrise over St. Andrew’s Bay
We got up at 2:45 this morning to go see the sun rise over the King penguin colony at St. Andrew’s Bay on South Georgia. More after I take a big fat nap.
For now, here’s a teaser:
And here’s video (click to play):
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