Adventures from 15th Nov 2008 Salisbury Plain & Prion Island
I finally had my first landing today thank God. We made land @ 8:30am on Salisbury Plain in the Bay of Isles. Nothing prepared me for what lay ahead!!!! As we landed we were taken in small groups in single file through some hissing fur seals which where very territorial. I have to say it was pretty scary until I got use to raising me arms to make myself look bigger. We finally made our way from the beach, past some elephant seals, which have the most amazing big eyes and always have a sad look on their face, and came across an amazing amount of King Penguins, the noise from them was deafening and the smell!!!!! When I stood away from the group and stayed very still they came right up to me. I wanted to reach out and touch them but I knew that was not allowed. On the way back to the beach we had to go via a small river in single file passed a large number of fur seals and the strangest thing happenedÂ… penguins started to follow also in single file, I hope someone got a good pic.
Next stop was Prion Island for the nesting site of the Wandering Albatross, we made the landing in a blizzard of snow. Again we were faced with our new friends the fur seals and because this beach was much smaller they were more territorial and our guides required the use of oars to bang the ground. Monica brought us up the new walk way moving the fur seals as we went. Once on the top there was a large viewing platform and we got a fabulous view of a nesting Wandering Albatross with their young. When the snow finally stopped it left a beautiful carpet of snow on the tussa grass.
