So much happening last few days its difficult to get time to write, must
have taken over 3000 photographs so far, food much better also, its like
a roller coaster of events, we have left South Georgia and are heading
for the Antarctic peninsula 800 miles to the south, missed a huge
section of ice crashing into the sea after breaking off a really big
iceberg earlier, several on board saw it happen, at the time I was on
the other side of the boat watching penguins swimming close by.
We spent about 2 hours navigating through a huge area of icebergs, one
appeared to be at least 3 miles long, the contrasting blues and whites
were spectacular, these icebergs have travelled all the way from
Antarctica.
First call was at 4.40am today to allow anybody interested attempt a
landing at Gold Harbour to visit the King Penguin colony, unfortunately
due to a bad swell this had to be cancelled, the shore crew were unable
to hold the first Zodiac which went broadside and a large wave nearly
capsized it sending one of its passengers onto the beach, he was lucky
to escape injury, moments later one of the ships crew manning a boarding
gantry on the ship was swamped when the ship heavily rolled, that was
the end of that, back to bed for another 2 hours and up again at 7-30am,
this time to view Macaroni Penguins at Cooper Bay, this is the only
place these penguins are found and it was well worthwhile.
We did not get to land as the beach was small and several Fur Seals were
nursing newly born pups and could be easily agitated so we cruised
parallel to the beach close enough to view and photograph both the
Penguins and young seal pups, it was amazing, Elephant seals were
relaxing quite close to our Zodiacs, we returned to the ship for
breakfast, shortly after that we entered the Drygalski Fjord, this it
the longest one in South Georgia, scenery was spectacular, the large
glacier at the end of the fjord was amazing, penguins and seals were
swimming close by and Cormorants were resting on the jagged face of the
glacier, several people saw the glacier calving just before we left the
fjord, just now I have heard the crew on the bridge have seen a 12 mile
long iceberg on radar not visible to us yet