There are many disadvantages to being
innumerate, I have discovered. The latest is that, when your phone takes it
upon itself to adopt the local, South Georgia, time – which is +1 hour – but
the ship decides to keep its own time unchanged, that makes it embarrassingly
difficult for some of us (see above) to work out when to set the alarm. With
the consequence that I was up, showered, and half-dressed before having it
brought to my attention that it wasn’t 6.30am but in fact 4.30. Sigh.
Yes, even though this is Silversea, it’s
still an expedition cruise, so early starts (just not that early) and physical exertion are part of the deal. We anchored
this morning in Fortuna Bay on the north coast of South Georgia in order to go
ashore and get up close with the wildlife: specifically, fur seals, elephant
seals and King penguins. One group was dropped off to hike to the site; the
rest of us stayed on board and then Zodiac’d onto the stony beach.
We (I was in the second group – you guessed
that, right?) still didn’t have it cushy because this morning it was snowing! Just little flakes that didn’t
settle, but proper snow, really chilly, and with it occasional gusts of lean-against-it
wind. I was very glad of my three layers of thermals and waterproofs (which had
all seemed very OTT when packing back home in 22 degrees).
We did a wet landing off the Zodiac onto a
beach packed with fur seals, some of which were, as predicted, not happy to see
us – they humped forward and growled, showing their sharp teeth. So we scuttled
past them and their wonderfully cute black furry pups (which also growled and
howled and bared their teeth) and fetched up at a big colony of King penguins.
They were pretty noisy too, peeping, squealing and squawking. Some were
courting, others sitting motionless on eggs.
There was a large crèche of brown fluffy
babies waiting for their various parents to come back with a feed for them.
Their feathers were so fine and thick that they looked enormous – but last
year’s brood who were busy fledging, with just patches of brown left, were much
slimmer. They were the most curious about us, and came up close to inspect
these strange red creatures who made all those clicking noises.
The elephant seals were moulting and not interested in us at all - they have to hang around onshore for ages while it happens so I suppose they have no spare energy for curiosity. They did do a great deal though of what sure sounded like farting but I was assured was sneezing because of mites in their nostrils.
Then the sun came out and made the
surroundings as amazing as the wildlife: the sea tropically turquoise, the
surrounding mountains with jagged edges streaked with snow, the sky blue above
it all. Glamorous.
It all made for a spectacular backdrop to
our lunch back on the Explorer as we sailed to the next bay, Husvik. There are
lots of Norwegian names on South Georgia, thanks to the early whalers, and in
this bay is one of their processing factories, as well as a cemetery with many
gravestones sunken into the peat.
Though the rusted remains of oil tanks and
machinery look picturesque, they’re too full of asbestos for us to be allowed
near them, so our attention was irresistibly focused again on the penguins,
feisty fur seals and the snotty, somnolent elephant seals.
One fur seal took exception to me though,
as I photographed a pup suckling from his mother, and suddenly rushed at me,
teeth all too visible. Instinctively, I held up my arms and shouted at him, and
he stopped just a couple of metres away and I was able to scuttle away behind a
group of other people and hide. It was honestly pretty alarming. “They will
chase you, and they will bite you,” we’d been told.
After the evening recap and briefing (where
we learned the official term “sneaky copulators” for the less dominant elephant
seal males, taking advantage of the beachmaster’s attention elsewhere) we had a
special Christmas Eve dinner, the staff wearing Santa hats and singing us some carols. Many of the passengers are European, and this is
their custom. I chose shrimp bisque, a mulled wine sorbet and roast goose for
my main course; and since it was too hard to choose between Christmas pudding,
cherries jubilee and chocolate macaroons for dessert, we had all three. After
all, it had been a long day…
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