South Georgia
It was a smorgasbord kind of day. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, all connected solely by our presence. If one were to suggest that we partake of the entire buffet at one sitting, no one would dare believe that it could be consumed and yet we did it. We followed the footsteps of Shackleton, Crean and Worsley from Fortuna Bay to Stromness Harbour. We tasted the wildlife of present and felt the morbid past emanating from the old whaling station there. We savored the silence of kayaks in Hercules Bay and we danced around icebergs with our ship.
Five point five kilometers sounds like a stroll in the park but believe us when we say traversing this distance, when half the trail is steep uphill and the other half straight down, is quite a feat. And we were well rested and well fed. How must it have been for the tiny band of men, tattered and torn, tired and starving but driven to save the lives of their companions that waited far away on Elephant Island? For them it was winter. For us, it was a warm and sunny day with scattered clouds smudging the clear cerulean sky like reflections of the blue and white glaciers below. As the first of our group crested the ridge the sound of a horn echoed from the valley walls. It could have been the call to work at the whaling station below but silence reigns there now. Only the sound of fur seal snarls and snuffles drifts between the vacant and rusting structures where once great whales were processed for their oil. That is not to say that there is no life in Stromness Bay however. It is writhing with energy. Fur seal families literally cover the shoreline with barely a place to walk. What might have been a path is filled by blubbery elephant seals. Moulting king penguins stand quietly at the periphery simply waiting for their feathery coat to renew itself so that they can go to sea again. Gentoo penguins trudge across the grassy flats and climb to the ridge above to feed their newly hatched chicks. Thundering reindeer hooves dash past and marauding skuas hover above.
Hercules Bay makes one feel Liliputian. Cliff faces stretch skyward, the rocks twisted and torqued as if by some giant hand. Waterfalls cascade from hidden valleys. In tiny kayaks we silently slipped along its edges, here and there encountering another pair just like ourselves or occasionally a small cluster of red-coated visitors in an inflatable motorized craft. The fur seals and elephant seals were here too but the stars of the show (apart from the rocks) were the flamboyant macaroni penguins. No rock ledge was too small or slope too steep to stop their procession from water below to nests high above hidden in tussock mounds.
A ship cannot dance you might say. Ours does. The Endeavour is quite adept and seems to delight in being so as we circle glistening bergs where the sea spray forms a misty skirt and a halo is the sun.
It was a smorgasbord kind of day. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, all connected solely by our presence. If one were to suggest that we partake of the entire buffet at one sitting, no one would dare believe that it could be consumed and yet we did it. We followed the footsteps of Shackleton, Crean and Worsley from Fortuna Bay to Stromness Harbour. We tasted the wildlife of present and felt the morbid past emanating from the old whaling station there. We savored the silence of kayaks in Hercules Bay and we danced around icebergs with our ship.
Five point five kilometers sounds like a stroll in the park but believe us when we say traversing this distance, when half the trail is steep uphill and the other half straight down, is quite a feat. And we were well rested and well fed. How must it have been for the tiny band of men, tattered and torn, tired and starving but driven to save the lives of their companions that waited far away on Elephant Island? For them it was winter. For us, it was a warm and sunny day with scattered clouds smudging the clear cerulean sky like reflections of the blue and white glaciers below. As the first of our group crested the ridge the sound of a horn echoed from the valley walls. It could have been the call to work at the whaling station below but silence reigns there now. Only the sound of fur seal snarls and snuffles drifts between the vacant and rusting structures where once great whales were processed for their oil. That is not to say that there is no life in Stromness Bay however. It is writhing with energy. Fur seal families literally cover the shoreline with barely a place to walk. What might have been a path is filled by blubbery elephant seals. Moulting king penguins stand quietly at the periphery simply waiting for their feathery coat to renew itself so that they can go to sea again. Gentoo penguins trudge across the grassy flats and climb to the ridge above to feed their newly hatched chicks. Thundering reindeer hooves dash past and marauding skuas hover above.
Hercules Bay makes one feel Liliputian. Cliff faces stretch skyward, the rocks twisted and torqued as if by some giant hand. Waterfalls cascade from hidden valleys. In tiny kayaks we silently slipped along its edges, here and there encountering another pair just like ourselves or occasionally a small cluster of red-coated visitors in an inflatable motorized craft. The fur seals and elephant seals were here too but the stars of the show (apart from the rocks) were the flamboyant macaroni penguins. No rock ledge was too small or slope too steep to stop their procession from water below to nests high above hidden in tussock mounds.
A ship cannot dance you might say. Ours does. The Endeavour is quite adept and seems to delight in being so as we circle glistening bergs where the sea spray forms a misty skirt and a halo is the sun.
