January 5, 2023June 26, 2023

St. Andrews Bay, South Georgia

This post is part of our epic adventure to the Falklands, South Georgia, and Antarctica. In case you don’t want to read this sequentially, or you are looking for a specific part of the trip, here are some shortcuts:

St. Andrews Bay, South Georgia – January 5th

54.4393° S, 36.1099° W

0 Celsius / 32 Fahrenheit – Partly cloudy with wind and sleet

The original plan was to travel to Ocean Harbour, but the weather had picked up making a landing there impossible. Instead, we headed to St. Andrews Bay, the largest King Penguin colony in South Georgia.

The wind was gusting 40 knots when we arrived, but we assembled in the mudroom hoping for a break in the weather. The two meter swell made boarding the zodiaks a challenge. One by one, we stood in the open door with a crew member strongly gripping your life vest. When the swell brought the zodiak close to the doorway, the crew would shout “go, go, go!” and you would step into the zodiak and sit as quickly as possible. A lot of passengers decided to skip this landing, and although it was way out of my comfort zone, we gave it a go. This was the weather I’d expected for the entire expedition. We’d been completely spoiled for the past few days.

The weather was like Melbourne: blue sky one minute, snowing the next. The moody storm clouds added to the atmosphere. We made our way towards the main colony, but the current in the river was way too strong to cross, so we had to observe from afar.

There were penguins, at various stages of molting, as far as the eye could see.

It was now sleeting sideways so we decided to head back to the landing site. The sky cleared again and we stopped to watch some grumpy elephant seals.

We took a slight detour on the way back to the ship to see (and smell) the main colony. Imagine if you only ate fish and had no sewer system and that is the smell downwind of a penguin colony.

Back on the ship, they announced that there were now 20 passengers isolating due to covid. But no one was seriously ill and they were confident that it could be contained. They were now out of the aluminuim folding tables so have started using wood stools to block doors in the hallway. We took mental note of who was at dinner and cross referenced it against the “who’s who” to see who was missing.