St. Andrew's Bay and Grytviken

 The view from the ship.

 A raft of King penguins.

 Negotiating a way around the elephant seals.

 An incredible panorama.

 Hanging around the fresh water to keep cool.

 A King Penguin.

 A beach master elephant seal.

A young elephant seal (weiner) who adopted our emergency bags. 

 Giant petrels devouring a dead baby elephant seal.

 King penguins and their year old chicks.

 Scobie at Ernest Shackelton's grave.

 Grytviken whaling station.

Saturday, November 2^nd.

Saint Andrew’s Bay, South Georgia

This morning we were woken up at 6 for a 6:30 breakfast. We are anchored at Saint Andrew’s Bay. Again, there are large mountains coming right down to the water, lots of snow on them and thousands of penguins and elephant seals on shore. We are to be second off today.

What a morning!! This has to be one of the beaches where National Geographic shoots. Just incredible! We were landed by Zodiac at the right-hand side of a large semicircular beach. There was a lonely elephant seal pup cuddled up with our equipment and straight away I saw two young elephant seal bulls having a sparring contest. We walked behind the crowd at the beach and watched the seals, giant petrels and the king penguins. The beach was divided by a melt water run off which prevented us from going further, but there were hundreds of young penguins playing in the water, trying to get the last of their molt feathers off and having a bath. There were many recently abandoned elephant seal pups (wieners), whose mothers, after nursing them for 21 days, leave them and head back to the sea. The pups fatten up and grow a bit before realizing no one is coming to feed them and then had off into the sea themselves. All the while you could see and hear the elephant seals roaring, expressing gas and sighing. We just tried to take it all in and take photos. Finally, John and I wandered back to the starting point to catch a Zodiac for a safari tour along the shore. It was absolutely incredible! One heaving mass of polar life. We saw a group of giant petrels eating a small seal. No one knew if it was sickly, or still born or injured, but the petrels loved it. The tour ended back at the ship where we sat with a few others and shared our thoughts over a cup of tea.

After lunch, we were visited by a young woman from the South Georgia Land Trust (or something like that) who welcomed us and gave us an introduction to the island. Her main point was about biosecurity. All ships have to visit this harbour on their first visit to South Georgia, but the visit is good for a year if you are ship in good standing. Therefore, G’s visit last year allows us to visit all of the sites we visited earlier on the island. Biosecurity means making sure that we do not introduce any invasive species. Rats came to the island on the first exploration boats (perhaps James Cook’s ship) and have been a problem ever since. Rats and mice eat the eggs of the nesting birds and will even eat the birds alive, as the birds have no evolutionary defense against them and will not leave the nest unprotected, or if they are chicks they will not leave because then their parents won’t feed them. She showed us a short clip of mice scurrying around in an underground petrel nest and the bird just staying there. Reindeer were introduced by the whalers as a source of meat and have eaten and trodden on most of the vegetation. As a result, after spending huge amounts of money both species have been eradicated. The reindeer were hunted and shot, but the rats had to be eliminated in a much more systematic method. They had to use helicopters to drop precise lines of bait all over the hundred-mile-long mountainous island. Apparently as of May 8, 2018 the island has been declared rat free (and presumably mice free as well). They are also struggling with an invasive beetle and some small weeds. She also told us about this abandoned Norwegian whaling town, Grytviken and its museum. Then we were called to the Zodiacs. Luckily the Rockhoppers (John and I) were first as a new woman met us in the mudroom and preformed a microscopic examination of our boots and Velcro fittings looking for seeds or plant material. Needless to say this slowed down our disembarkation dramatically. Poor Bruce whose group went out last was still on the boat an hour later.

We were dropped off at the cemetery where the ‘Boss’ Ernest Shackelton is buried on the island he successfully reached after his ship sank and he navigated here months later. Then we had a tour by a woman who has lived here off and on for twenty years. She said she does not remember such a long string of great weather, and said that typically they are lucky to get one good day in nine! Then she explained the whaling operation. Stats that stick out: 175250 whales were taken, at its peak 25 whales were slaughtered per day and 90 million barrels of oil were produced overall. This was one of the first to be set up in 1904 and eventually closed in 1964 when it was no longer profitable due to lack of whales. I visited the post office/gift shop looking for a t-shirt but found none suitable. Then some of us went to the small Lutheran church for a short concert by Blaise. He sang five songs, one of which was an ode to Shackelton. He is a very talented young man.

After that we returned to the ship for dinner. John and I had a couple of beer and then sat at a table for eight with Blaise for his ‘Philosophy of Music’ talk, which didn’t amount to too much, partly because he had to run off to perform again in the Polar Bear Bar. I met Gabor, the hotel manager, who was offering Falkland Brewery T-shirts. I bought one as I have enjoyed the beer from the micro-brewery in the Falklands and here on the ship. Then we listened to Blaise. He was all about a song that he thought Johnny Cash wrote called ‘I’ve Been Here and There Man’. I always thought it was written by a Canadian but when I went to Australia I learned that an Australian actually wrote it. I have to find the different composers for Blaise. Off to bed where we found Bruce already asleep, so we both got onto his bed with him. All he said was ‘Oh dear.’