South America Explorations: Week 14 - Falkland Islands & South Georgia

Saturday, January 11^th, 2014

At 3:45pm in Ushuaia, Argentina, I showed up to a seemingly random parking lot waiting for a large crowd of people to magically appear. I had booked a 19-day cruise to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island, and Antarctica about a month ago through a travel agency that specializes in last-minute cruise deals. A month ago isn’t all that “last-minute”, but they were offering 30% off and the cruise company’s website showed that there were only 7 spots left. The company is G-Adventures, formerly known as Gap Adventures, from Canada who I had heard very good things about.

After lingering for 15 minutes and seeing no one, I remembered that my travel agent isn’t the most organized person and I walked a block over to where I did see a large group of seemingly random people lingering around – and this was the right crowd. A staff member asked me for my name, handed me a boarding card and took my bag from me.

We were standing near the pier and we could see the ship a mere 400 meters away from us, but apparently it’s faster and more efficient for a bus to take us to the boat versus walking there ourselves. The staff member shared with us that the reason they took our passports is because the customs/immigration occurs much more quickly in bulk than individually. I suspect that the pier and bus company are in cahoots to create an unnecessary layer of services to skim more money from tourists.

A’ron from Switzerland sat down next to me on the bus – he had been traveling a few weeks already and thought I looked familiar. But it turned out we hadn’t met. Nonetheless, it was nice to sit to someone my age (turns out he’s only a year younger) versus the overwhelming number of blue-hairs on the bus. And just so I’m clear up front, the blue-hairs were overwhelmingly nice and friendly and many were an absolute hoot to hang out with too.

I’m on the first bus to the ship, and I made sure to rush to my room to claim a bed. I’m in a triple on Deck 2, the lowest level of passenger decks, and I wanted to do everything I could to make sure I didn’t get stuck on a top bunk. So I waited. And waited. And no one else showed up. As it turned out, the ship didn’t sell out (apparently, a large group cancelled at the last minute) and so my triple turned into a single.

Once we are all on board, the captain steered the boat out of dock by around 5pm and then we are all gathered together in the large conference room called the Discovery Lounge for some initial basics – the ship layout, the safety briefings, and of course, when and how we will get our food. Soon afterwards, we are called for dinner up in the dining room. As we would find out, dinners are generally table service while breakfast and lunch are buffet style. At this point, I hadn’t met anyone other than A’ron yet, so I decided to sit with some people randomly to introduce myself and say hi. Fortunately for me, my first victims were some lovely mildly older ladies from Australia – Julie and Belinda. They were friendly and hilarious (as many Aussies are), and until the end of the trip, I always loved seeing them again – and I even took to calling them “my girls”, which they seemed to be amused about as well.

Dinner itself was amazing. I had heard that the cruise food to the Antarctic can border on basic as many of the vessels making the trip were old research vessels and so creature comforts often did not exist. We must have gotten the luck of the draw because the food service was positively unbelievable.

After dinner, most of the passengers went out on deck to watch the sunset as we made our way out of the Beagle Channel and into the ocean. While the sky wasn’t completely clear, the clouds that were present humored us and reflected the sun nicely and added to the beautiful scenery.

Sunday, January 12^th, 2014

Today was a full day at sea on our way to the Falkland Islands. This gave both us and the crew ample opportunity to get to know one another as well as understand how this whole thing was going to go down. Our expedition leader, John or Mr. K, was responsible overall for the trips and landings that we would make during the cruise – he had to coordinate this with changing weather patterns as well as with the other tourist vessels. He was a wonderful guy and he had a self-confident swagger about him that served his role really well, though some of the younger women decided this echoed Austin Powers. So we called him Austin K from that point forward, but only behind his back out of common decency.

Other folks on the crew: Heidi – a marine biologist; Scott – a historian; Frank S. Todd – a wildlife expert who we learned was instrumental in the penguin encounter at Sea World San Diego, a fact we were never to forget; Alex – a young PhD geologist who gave excellent lectures but was a bit of a turd when it came to anything else; Doug – the Zodiac carekeeper (more on Zodiacs in a bit); Dr. Amama – an Indian-Kiwi doctor who had the same camera as me; Dave – the camping guy; Randall & Beth – an young couple who ran the kayaking program; Osi – who helped out here and there and we think was only there because she and Scott were a couple; Clark – whose actual job I’m not sure of but we all liked him the best of all the Zodiac drivers; Paul – a professional photographer on board to provide advice and tips; and Jeff – the musician extraordinaire.

So Zodiacs… this is the brand name of the small 12-ish person outboard-motorized rafts that has become ubiquitous with all such crafts, regardless of make. In our case, they were Zodiac branded as well. Since the uninhabited islands that we would be going to were a bit devoid of piers, the only way we could get to the land was to board Zodiacs 10-at-a-time and get ferried over. Doug went over the procedure on what and how Zodiacs worked, and then walked us through the mud room, where we would get dressed in our outdoor gear prior to boarding the Zodiacs. Clear as mud? Perfect.

In addition to the Dining Room and Discovery Lounge, there were a few other rooms of note: the Polar Bear Bar, a very small and poorly stocked gym, an under-utilized sauna, a small computer room, and a library. The library was one of my favorite rooms because it was always nice and quiet and an easy place to relax and read, in particular a large beanbag chair that a few of us seemed to always try and compete for. Half of the library is a Lonely Planet guide library, and at some point in the voyage I figured it’d be interesting to see what they had to say about Cincinnati – the first two lines mentioned that Jerry Springer used to be the mayor and Mark Twain’s quote that he wants to be in Cincinnati when the world ends since it’s always 20 years behind the time. Clearly those are excellent words to set a great first impression for would-be tourists. Not that I’d disagree though…

The weather had been surprisingly calm all day, which was surprising given that we were in open water near an area of historically bad weather. The crew seemed a bit surprised too. This also afforded us a second spectacular sunset to gawk at. Many of the other passengers spent plenty of time on deck bird-watching as well. I’m not much of a birder at all, so outside of the massive giant albatrosses that seemed to be everywhere, I found it very difficult to get too excited.

The esteemed Frank S. Todd took time out of his busy schedule to talk through the birds that we would see in the Falklands, South Georgia, and Antarctic, frequently stressing that much of this information should be common knowledge to any lay person. I was tempted to raise my hand and ask him a very basic and inane question just to piss him off, but decided against it lest the birders swarm and attack me.

The ship has some entertainment on board as well – Jeff Wiseman is a musical artist who plays guitar and piano and sang for us in the Polar Bear Bar most evenings, unless we had a particularly busy day or an early morning ahead of us. While many people stayed in the Discovery Lounge watching one of the many parts of David Attenborough’s wonderful BBC documentary on the Arctic & Antarctic regions, I figured I can find those videos at home and watch them there and then. Live music, especially when performed well, just can’t be replaced. When Austin K had introduced Jeff earlier today, he mentioned that the crew was positively ecstatic to have Jeff on board as the musician, and true to his word it showed – the staff almost outnumbered the passengers on this particular evening.

After Jeff played a few sets and turned his stage lights off, A’ron and I had a chat with him and the Filipino bartender Garnet outside while they were having a smoke. They also seemed to unequivocally praise G-Adventures and shared that the staff really worked together well and all of the employees were treated fairly and paid well too. As a result, their turnover was very low. Almost all of the “non-skilled” workers were Filipino and many were relatives – they were self-selective too in that they wouldn’t recommend someone who wasn’t a hard worker. It was really nice and comforting to hear Garnet talk about this passionately after I had heard a polar opposite account from my hiking guide Santi in Salta about Royal Caribbean and the rest of the traditional cruise ships. Garnet confirmed Santi’s story for most operators as well.

Monday, January 13^th, 2014

We woke up this morning to the suave and calm soothing voice of Austin K over the PA system, giving us an exhaustive account of the weather conditions outside and letting us know that we had approximately 30 minutes before breakfast. On days where we had some sort of operations (i.e. Zodiac landings, etc.), Austin K would be waking us up – fortunately for us, this was the majority of days. His announcements cracked us up so much that a few people got up earlier on purpose to videotape him speaking into the system. I think several others asked him if he could record their voicemail greeting on their phone.

After breakfast this morning, we were separated into two groups (Ross and Weddell) and each group was called separately to the mudroom to get dressed and get into the Zodiacs. The first time we all got dressed, it took forever – take off your shoes, add extra socks (for some), pull on rain pants, put on Wellingtons (rubber boots), put rain jacket on, put deceptively tricky life vest on, and go stand in line. By the end, the 10-minute procedure was less than a minute as a fellow young’un showed me a fireman trick to store the rain pants shoved over the boots so it was as simple as step-in and pull-up. Then I’d put my jacket and life vest on as I walked to the line. Voila. That is way too much detail, I know.

The first landing spot today (and of our trip) was to New Island, an island at the far western edge of the Falklands. Once on land, we had to walk about a kilometer to the other side of the island where there was a colony of Rockhopper penguins and Blue-Eyed Shag birds nesting and caring for their young. All of these sea birds (yes, penguins are birds too) generally only come to land to mate, raise their young, and in some cases, molt. Otherwise, they are much happy at or in the sea. The Rockhoppers themselves had a pretty unique look about them – short and waddly, bright-red devil eyes, and angled yellow eyebrows that make them look like grumpy old men. The penguin chicks were much more cuddly-looking balls of grey fur, though they were about 5 weeks old and had about 3 more weeks to go before they are weaned and off on their own.

When I got to the viewing site, there were already dozens of other Redcoats around. I should explain – we were all issued a high-quality heavy red jacket (ours to keep) to ensure that we stayed warm on deck and during the landings. Almost everyone wore theirs, myself included, when we were out and about. Since these were visible a mile away and I generally abhor crowds, I took to calling my fellow passengers “Redcoats”, which was particularly funny to me given that the majority of passengers were British or Australian.

Fortunately, we were allowed to walk around so I took the opportunity to see where everyone else was and go somewhere else. This worked particularly well after those among us who were physically inclined (or more precisely, thought they were physically inclined) were led down a rocky gulley to the ocean where the Rockhopper penguins were coming ashore. We got to watch them porpoise in the water and launch themselves onto the rocks before waddling up to wherever it was that they were going. Here again, the Redcoats all went left, so I went right and perched myself on a rock to see what would happen. While I didn’t have any spectacular encounters, I did get to watch groups of Rockhoppers hop rocks right in front of me, as well as swim and bathe themselves in a small tidal pool. It’s entirely possible that the Redcoats saw the same thing or more than me on the other side, but that didn’t bother me much.

What amazed me was the sheer magnitude of professional-grade photography equipment that everyone had with them. The standard person had a 2-3 mega lenses and a $3000 Canon or Nikon, and unfortunately, many of these same folks were still shooting in automatic mode. There was one couple who had 7 cameras between them and were non-stop clicking pictures. I think they actually spent more time viewing the wildlife through the viewfinder than with their own two eyes. Of course, that being said, it is entirely possible that all of these people know precisely what they are doing and have amazing photos to share and print and frame for their family, friends, and business associates. It’s possible.

Needless to say, at times I felt rather inadequate with my brand new $1000 camera with a kit lens and no zoom lens. Fortunately, three others on the boat had the exact same camera, and they all seemed to love it – this helped alleviate any feelings of camera envy. And then there was British Chris, who never got the memo and shot all of his pictures on his cell phone. But you know, I can almost guarantee you that he saw more wildlife from his own two eyes than anyone else on the ship.

At one point, staff member Scott saw a large preying-style bird and yelled over to Frank S. Todd, resident wildlife expert, and asked what type of falcon that was. I almost answered “I think it’s a Millennium Falcon”, but it was just too early in the trip for me to know whether or not they would find this funny or annoying. With the benefit of hindsight, Scott would have probably found it funny, whereas Frank S. Todd would have been annoyed, which I would have been perfectly fine with. But I guess it goes to show that my idiotic comments need a certain comfort level before they come out. Indeed this comfort level would be reached very soon, but just not this quickly.

After lunch, we arrived at our second destination for the day, the West Point Island where we had to walk a couple of kilometers to get to the viewing point to see nesting Rockhoppers and Black-Browed Albatrosses (also known as BBA’s for those birders out there). These albatrosses were beautiful – the black brows made it appear that they had black eyeliner. And their chicks were adorably cute as well – one of my favorite shots of the trip came from here. Unfortunately, it was unseasonably hot and all of the chicks were panting. Frank S. Todd informed us later on that some of the chicks would undoubtedly dehydrate and perish, and reminded us that we would see harsher realities in the coming days and that we cannot intervene with nature more than our presence already is.

After about 45 minutes of gawking as a massive clan of Redcoats, Alex invited those who were physically able and willing to take a long route back to the ship. He had never walked the route so he shared loudly that he had no idea what the terrain would be like and how long the walk would be, but unfortunately a sizable group of people who really should’ve taken a jeep ride back to the ship joined us nonetheless. I suppose I admire their determination and attitude to not miss out, but at the same time, I think it was a bit irresponsible since there was no way to “rescue” them if they got too tired.

This hike ended up taking about 2 hours, and with the differing physical abilities, there was a completion range of +/- 45 minutes or more. What really annoyed a number of us is that we ended up walking straight through a den of penguin nests that were burrowed beneath the shrubs. Alex didn’t bother to find a safe route or notify the other staff members that the others needed to be careful – instead, he was like, hey look there’s a penguin. At other points, we had to navigate through some very thick knee-deep thorny brush as well as a barb-wire fence that we weren’t sure how to get around. Needless to say, I was happy to get back to the Zodiac landing site and then back on the ship.

My wonderful “one of these things is not like the other” moment came about back on board the ship, when I was sitting in a chair, reading a book, while wearing the G-adventures jacket liner. I rather like the liner – it’s black and slightly puffy with a diamond crisscross stitch pattern, thug style. Represent!

Anyway, this older Aussie fellow came up to me and casually and completely innocently remarked how nice he thought it was that I get time off to read. He assumed that because of my skin color and the G-Adventures jacket (which he didn’t realize he himself possessed as well), I must be an employee, and a particularly lazy one at that since all of the other employees (predominantly Filipino) were up and around and busting their tails non-stop. Of the 120 passengers, there were 2 Indians and 6 Chinese people; the rest were almost entirely white British, Aussies, Canadians, or Americans. While I knew this intrinsically already, I suppose I became acutely aware of it after this encounter by this well-meaning individual (seriously – he’s a very nice fellow).

For dinner that evening, I sat with another random couple. This friendly, albeit rather shy and often secluded, couple had been on two other G-Adventures cruises on this very ship, though both previous trips were in the Arctic starting from the town of Longyearbyen and around the Norwegian island of Svalbard. I swear I didn’t make those names up, so I’ll give you a moment to check it on Google maps. They were so very happy with this ship, the crew, and the company that the thought of going with another company never crossed their minds. Looks like I definitely may have lucked out with this cruise.

Tuesday, January 14^th, 2014

Our agenda today was a full day in the town of Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands. There are about 3000 year-round residents of these islands, though I’m not entirely positive as to why… but I suppose it can’t be all that different from those people who willingly choose to live in other cold places, like, say Canadia. One thing that was unmistakable was the British pride of the residents – the islands are a protectorate of the United Kingdom, but Argentina claims them as their own as well, though there are few to no Argentinians on the islands. On the one hand, the UK really has no business “owning” islands randomly scattered around the globe (and neither does the USA, for that matter), and so geographically-speaking, it makes far more sense for the islands to be part of Argentina. But then again, since there are no Argentinians there and never really have been… I don’t know what to think, and the “justified colonialism” mentality of many Europeans even today just serves to piss me off.

A’ron and I decided to forgo the proffered bus and walk to a location nearby called Gypsy Cove where a small colony of Magellanic penguins resides. As we were leaving the boat, Helen, an Australian lady roughly our age was walking out at the same time and joined us. We apparently took the very long way around to Gypsy Cove, which is the route Austin K told us to go.  But along the way, we saw a really cool towering totem pole of direction signs with distances.

By the time we made it to Gypsy Cove a few hours later, the folks who had taken the bus there were already leaving, which meant that we had the area to ourselves. We walked along the boardwalk and saw some of the Magellanic penguins and chicks living in their quarters – the nest was a burrowed out hole beneath the bushes, which is entirely different from the Rockhopper nests which more resembled bird nests made from twigs and dirt. Unfortunately, we couldn’t venture far off the boardwalk path to get a closer look because some of the areas still potentially had land mines. No seriously – Argentina had “invaded” about 30 years ago and one of their tactics was to land mine the heck out of the landscape. I’m not exactly sure how this helps their mission, but that’s what they did. The UK sent troops down to reclaim the islands and they did so in something like 70 days. The Argentinian army was largely conscripted and were no match for the trained professional army that Britain had, so it’s no surprise it was over relatively quickly, even though Argentina would be better equipped geographically to resupply and strengthen their troops.

But back to Gypsy Cove, we followed the boardwalk until it magically disappeared. There was a trail, but then this disappeared as well. We weren’t at risk for stepping on a land mine or anything because those areas were very clearly fenced off with big red “DEATH” signs abound. But we weren’t exactly sure where we were supposed to be. After checking out the neat remnants of a cool WWII anti-naval gunnery thingamabob, we decided to follow what we thought was a footpath. It was a footpath alright, but not a people footpath. I rounded a corner and almost ran over a very startled and curious Magellanic penguin. After the craziness from yesterday’s romp through penguin grounds, we were now batting 2-for-2 in traipsing around areas we probably should not have been.

So we made like a tree and leaved, but this time we took a shortcut back towards the ship. We were positively starving by this point, so we walked a few more kilometers into town to get the best burger in Stanley at the Victory Bar. I was so happy when we got there – we immediately ordered burgers only to be told that they were out of meat. What!!! I got up to leave, when the funny proprietor told me to sit my butt down. She made a phone call and a few minutes later, a lady walked in with some frozen patties. We got our burgers. And there was much rejoicing.

Throughout the morning, the weather continued to be spectacular, just as it had been the day before. As we left the Victory Bar to continue our way to the museum on the far end of town, the wind started picking up. It was no matter though – the last bus from the museum leaves at 5pm and it was only 3:30pm so we had plenty of time. So we meandered a bit and checked out the churches and the post office and other such things that all towns have. And we got to the museum just after 4pm, only to find out that the museum closed at 4pm. Why would you have a pick-up time at the museum at 5pm if it closes at 4pm? This is the question that reverberated in my head as we trudged back to town in the now windier winds (yes, that’s a technical term). Before long, we saw the bus and ran towards it like our lives depended on it. And the bus then proceeded to go to the museum with us in it, even though no one was at the museum anymore – we could vouch for that. Yes, this is all completely trivial, but clearly it annoyed me to no end.

Back on the ship, we had yet another excellent dinner and then retired once more to the Polar Bear Bar to watch Jeff play again. Drinks on the ship weren’t actually that expensive - $20 for a bottle of wine and $6 for a mixed drink. This is bargain cheap compared to many other cruises, or so I’m told since I don’t generally step foot onto those things. But I had smuggled three very large 1.5L bottles of red wine aboard (as many others had done the same) because they were the equivalent of $4 a bottle and were still pretty darn good. So I had to find a way to consume said wine in a mildly inconspicuous manner. A young Australian couple, Chris and Kirsten (Air Force pilot and IT consultant respectively) were my co-conspirators. The solution? Red tea. This was our “code word” for filling up opaque coffee mugs with red wine downstairs and bringing it up to the bar. Yes, I’ve turned cheap and should be slapped silly. But in my defense, I had no idea what they would charge for a bottle when I bought them. And I even ended up taking one of the bottles back to the hostel after the trip was over because I felt too crummy about it to even open it.

Wednesday, January 15^th, 2014

Today, we had a full day at sea as we scurried over towards South Georgia Island as only a large massive ice-reinforced ship can scurry.

It would probably be a good time to introduce some more passengers, some by name, others by nickname, and yet others by stereotype. Here we go:

The folks I hung out with most: A’ron – Swiss fellow my age who is a sound engineer and my new roommate (more on that in a minute); Brittany – early 30s younger ‘Merican from Portland via Alaska who doubles as an Energizer bunny; and Chelsea – late 20s Canadian from Calgary who just quit her job as a mechanical engineer and is traveling for a year starting with this ship ride.

At some point in the trip (a bit later), we started calling ourselves Daycare for obvious reasons. Other on-and-off Daycare members: Celine, Helen, Shauna, Julianne, Alexis, and probably 1-2 that I’m missing. Photographer Paul also unofficially joined Daycare as he seemed to enjoy hanging out with us more than the blue hairs.

Nicknamed People: Crox & Sox – the middle-aged and energetic Australian couple that always walked around wearing Crocs and Socks; Black Lung Mary – formerly self-titled as Old Mary but renamed when she developed a horrible cough that kept her (and roommate Chelsea) up at night for the first week or so; Irish Mary – formerly known as Young Mary but renamed when Old Mary was renamed; Cool Moustache Guy – an older Australian fellow with a full on beard and an excellent moustache that put Rollie Fingers to shame; Cool Kenny – older Scottish gentleman who was offended when I talked about Cool Moustache Guy and was only appeased when I started calling him Cool Kenny; the Wonder Twins – this couple was always wearing the same outerwear as one another and had identical cameras and identical camera bags and identical scowls on their faces…; Sir Shorts-a-Lot – an Australian fellow who ALWAYS wore shorts, and if it was too cold, he’d add thermals underneath his shorts, and he also doubled as the friendly unintentional racist; Too Sexy – a really old Israeli lady who often hobbled around wearing a mesh shirt that said “I’m Too Sexy” on it (over another shirt, thank goodness); the plastic narcissist – a young surgically embellished lady who constantly asked others to take a photo for her and then asked everyone to see if they had photos she could copy that had her in them; and finally AW Michael – unbelievably avid birder so named because he was the prototypical attention whore who was always asking questions and needed to be the center of attention, I did my best to avoid him at all costs, though I must admit he was actually a very nice person who also provided a steady stream of unintentional comedic value (skip down to Tidbits if you’re too anxious).

Since I was unexpectedly in a single room, I was actually a bit saddened as I was looking forward to having a roommate. After I learned that A’ron was in a quad, I invited him to join me in my room and the staff assented. For my tremendous sacrifice, A’ron paid for my burger and beer in Stanley. It was probably worth a heck of a lot more than that, but I was ok with it. Wait… A’ron – if you’re reading this, skip the last paragraph – you still owe me!

One of the more interesting lectures of the trip was given today by Scott on Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team’s attempt to trek across the Antarctic continent in 1914. Instead, their ship became lodged in ice and the team over-wintered there. When the ship finally caved to the enormous pressure of the ice, they had to abandon ship, move all of their necessaries to the lifeboats, and wait for spring to come to thaw out the ice. And then they had to figure out where to go from there. Seriously, I’m not going to come close to doing this story justice, so click here and read this synopsis instead. Go on, I’ll wait for you.

Thursday, January 16^th, 2014

Today was another full day at sea. The only difference was that the weather was not wonderful anymore, so I spent at most 5 minutes outside all day.

Again, we had a few lectures to pass the time. The venerable Frank S. Todd talked to us in his usual condescending manner about sub-Antarctic and Antarctic penguin species. We would basically be seeing all but one species during this trip: we’d see Rockhoppers, Magellanic, King, Chinstrap, Gentoo, and Adelie, and we would not see the Emperors since they are well inland on Antarctic land mass where it’s not exactly reachable by ship.

Paul gave a quick talk on camera basics – aperture vs shutter speed vs ISO and the like, which served to reinforce what I had learned over the past 3 months playing with my camera in manual mode. And finally, Heidi talked to us about seals. Apparently, there are two different categories of seals – true seals and eared seals. Both share a common ancestor with dogs, which explains why they really look so darn similar. But true seals can’t use their front flippers to perch upright and have to shimmy to move on land, whereas eared seals can move quite quickly using their front flippers as legs.

In the late afternoon, we passed by some seemingly miscellaneous rocks jutting out of the ocean – called Shag Rocks. Normally, there’s lots of birds flying around these rocks. Maybe there were this time too, I’m not sure. I stepped outside for only a few minutes to look because it was rainy and it really didn’t seem like all that much to me.

As has become my custom, I went up to the Polar Bear Bar in the evening to listen to Jeff play. As I was quickly gaining “regular” status, I started sitting in the same spot up front against the side wall as well. Apparently, Jeff’s luggage was lost en route to Ushuaia so he was only aboard with his carry-ons (which fortunately for us, included his guitar), some hastily purchased underwear, and clothing donations from the rest of the crew + leftovers from previous passengers. Among the items in the lost luggage was his harmonica holder, so when he sang “Piano Man”, he needed Heidi to run up and hold his harmonica in front of his face since his hands were busy on the piano.

I loved his selection of songs, though many I had never heard before. Even now as I write this a few weeks after deboarding the boat, I can still hear the music, especially the sing-along songs. His repertoire each evening was similar, and every time he launched into Don McLean’s “Miss American Pie”, I couldn’t help singing Weird Al’s Star Wars version, “well my, my, this here Anakin guy, may be Vader someday later but now he’s just a small fry…”. I didn’t sing it out loud. Well, not too loud at least.

Friday, January 17^th, 2014

Austin K informed us that we had arrived at South Georgia this morning and that the weather was conducive to our planned operations.

Our first landing was at a place called Salisbury Plain, where we were astounded by the sheer quantity of king penguins around. There was a massive colony on the far left side of the beach, but it was difficult to get there without blatantly violating the “15 foot rule” because there were so many animals. So I just stayed and wandered a bit and tried to find a good spot to observe. The penguins are beautiful, no doubt, especially the colorings on the king penguins with orange beaks, orange jaw plates below their ears, and an orange neckline. But when they are molting, they are definitely less than beautiful – the new layer of feathers pushes out the old, which turns into an ugly brown furry coat on its way out.

But my favorites were the fur seals because they are just downright cute. They just smile at you when they are lying down. Their mannerisms, facial expressions, and even the vocalizations remind me of dogs and it was difficult to not go up and pet them. They were very playful with one another and frequently wrestled and tackled one another. The babies had a light yappy type of bark, the adolescents had a deeper bark, and the adults seemed to just be content to whimper a lot. Fortunately for me, I was able to find a secluded spot where two very cute and curious pups came close to me to investigate a bit – this made my morning for me.

Among the other discoveries I made while meandering around slowly were some scuas (an ugly scavenger bird) eating fresh baby fur seal poop. Apparently they liked it so much that they went to trying to pick the un-expelled poop from this poor seal pup’s butt. He wasn’t amused, but couldn’t do much about it since he was not much bigger than the scuas.

When we got back to the boat, the dining crew had a surprise for us – because the weather was nice (a bit cold and windy, but mostly blue skies and sun), they made a barbeque for us and we sat outside on the deck and dined. The food was fantastic and I had a hard time not going back for fourths and fifths – in addition to a ton of sides and trimmings, they had burgers, lamb chops, small steaks, pork ribs, and a complete roasted suckling pig. It was really quite incredible. To top it off, snow flurries actually started falling while we dined, which made the entire scene unbelievably picturesque.

In the afternoon, we went to Fortuna Bay which was not as over-populated with animals as Salisbury Plain so it was a bit easier to maneuver around. Similar to the first few landings, I noticed all the Redcoats were tending towards the left side, so I went right. Off in the distance, I saw that Heidi was sitting down quietly and had a young seal come up to her and sniff her… and then he got protective of her and barked at anyone who came close by. So I found a different spot to plant and try and do the same. Fortunately for me, about 10 minutes later a young seal decided to check me out too. It took him about 15 more minutes to get comfortable with the idea, but after lots of starts-and-stops, he finally came up and sniffed me a few times before trying to gnaw and get a taste too. He was very cute.

Because we had a long day, there was no musical entertainment this evening. Instead, they showed us an episode of a British show called Top Gear, where the hosts raced a Toyota truck against a dog sled to see who could reach the North Pole first. I’ve had a number of Europeans mention how crazy and hilarious this show is, and now I completely understand why. Mental note to watch this series on Netflix when I get home.

Most everyone retired to sleep after this, but A’ron and I went up on deck and were rewarded with a wonderful sky with a bright moon and plenty of stars. We’ve really been crazy lucky with this weather.

Saturday, January 18^th, 2014

After an early breakfast this morning, about 80 of us went on a short 3 mile hike to retrace the last part of Shackleton’s journey across South Georgia island – the ship would drop us off where we anchored in Fortuna Bay and pick us up on the other side of the peninsula in Stromness Bay. Austin K had told the group about the hike in the briefing yesterday, but unfortunately he oversold it a bit and made it seem quite simple. In fact, it was quite challenging and he didn’t expect 2/3 of the boat to sign up, when at best, we should have had closer to 1/3 of the passengers on the hike. But hopefully they’ll chalk that down to learning at some point and fine tune the sell job for next time.

The hike itself didn’t start out well for me. I was in the first 5 people at the beginning, and our guide Alex wanted me (and those behind me) to walk on a certain path, but this was being blocked by a young seal. Alex told me to push through and the seal would back off. He didn’t – instead, he charged me and nipped me on my shin. I didn’t realize it then, but later up the hill a bit, one of the other passengers told me that seals carry some nasty bacteria and told me to make sure it didn’t draw blood. That’s when I noticed some puncture marks in my pants (souvenir!), but my skin was only minorly grazed. Even so, throughout the rest of the day, the legend of the seal bit grew (I swear I didn’t have a ton to do with this) and I had loads of people asking me how my leg was doing. When I retell the story later on, I figure I need to add more drama and embellish it up a bit. Fortunately, there are a couple of old scars in the same area of my shin, so this embellished story will likely include the seal chomping into my bone with his incisors and me having to vigorously shake him off. Yeah, that sounds better.

By the way, I did check with the good doctor and she confirmed it was nothing of concern.

So the first part of the hike was pretty steep and challenging – since this isn’t a highly frequented trail, it’s more of a direct route versus switchbacks. We had to stop multiple times on the way up because it was proving very difficult to many. In fact, a few turned back because it was way too difficult and the ship had to turn around to fetch them. Several more really should have gone back too, of course.

The first major landscape feature was a small lake near the crest of the hike – this lake was called Crean Lake, after Tom Crean who was part of Shackleton’s group and who had the misfortune of falling in the freezing waters here because they didn’t realize it was a lake. There was a much smaller lake several hundred yards up and the guide was unaware of a name for that lake. So I stuck my foot in it and then deemed it Paraag Lake. And thus it is so.

By the way, I have no idea if the Hoosiers basketball coach Tom Crean is related to this adventurer Tom Crean.

At another stopping point after the crest, Chelsea was getting a bit bored and ran up a bank of snow and then showed Brittany how to slide down the snow on her front. It looked ridiculously fun, so about 10 more of us ran up there and started doing the same for the next 20 minutes while we waited for others to catch up.

Twenty minutes later, we got to a point where we had to descend a very steep rocky and snowy hill. The guides apparently didn’t feel too comfortable with this, so we waited for about 20 minutes while they decided what to do. Most people lined up after walking down most of the rocky part, just outside the snowy portion. And the restless among us (the younger folks, mostly) stayed up top where there were good views and relaxed. Most of us were getting a bit annoyed, or at least antsy. It would have been nice if we could just go and split up the group, but I know that can be difficult to manage too.

Finally we all got down the hill, but only after a lot more waiting, until I could take it no more and made my own separate path down. The bottom was a vast gradeless plain, except it was very marshy and there was a river in particular that had no clean path to cross. Many of us (myself included) had traded in our tour-issued Wellington boots for our own hiking boots (or tennis shoes, in some cases) and walking in ankle deep freezing water was less than desirable.

While we had lunch, the ship sailed a few hours to Grytviken, which is the administrative capital of South Georgia. After we anchored, we learned more about the rat elimination program that they are working on in the islands. Brown rats apparently came over on the whaling or supply boats a few centuries ago and have infested the island where they have no natural predators. They are also feasting on bird eggs and young chicks which has had a significant impact on several species. So, there’s a preservation group who has been raising money to drop rat bait all over the island to kill them – so far, they’ve done about 2/3 of the islands with great success and are raising the money for the last phase.

Out in the small town, we first stopped at the cemetery where Ernest Shackleton is buried and had a quick toast of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey to him. And then we got to wander about town a bit – there’s an old whaling station here too, and the rusting remnants are all around and available for wandering and photographing. There’s also a small museum here, which I admittedly rushed through a bit because there were too many people there. There was also a small church and a post office. I ended up getting an early zodiac back to the boat so that I could get a quick workout and sauna session in before dinner.

After dinner, Paul walked about 10 of us through an overview of what type of post-processing you can do with RAW photo files with Lightroom software. I was curious, really, but I don’t know yet if I want to get serious enough to do this with my photos. It feels a little like cheating.

Tidbits

1.       All of the triple and quad rooms were on Deck 2, the lowest passenger deck. To add insult to injury, our windows were portholes that had to be clamped shut during periods of high waves to ensure that they did not break. I happened upon a suite on Deck 4 at some point this week and it was glorious – a living room, queen-sized bed, and massive bathroom. From that point forward, we started calling Deck 2 the “Peasant Deck”.

2.       Unintentional Comedic Genious moment #1 from AW Michael: he’s in line with Air Force Chris getting some tea and he says “so are we all teabagging?” Chelsea and I overheard, glanced at one another, and keeled over laughing. Later that evening at dinner during the retelling of the story, we decided that teabagging was at its best when done spitefully and that the female version of teabagging should be called “clamtrapping”(nice one, Guernsey Kerry). I think other people started to realize they shouldn’t sit at our dinner table somewhere around this point.

3.       Unintentional Comedic Genious moment #2 from AW Michael: he spent the better part of one of these mornings out on deck looking for whales and the telltale air blow. When asked about it, he remarked, “I’m going on five and a half hours now with only a single blow.”

4.       Unintentional Comedic Genious moment #3 related to AW Michael: he burst in the lounge from the deck rambling about something in a very excited fashion. One of my fellow Daycare friends asked what happened and an older lady retorted, without missing a beat, “oh, Michael just had a whalegasm.”