We’re not in Kansas anymore, but in the realm of the King penguin. After dinner the ship moved to Gold Harbor, and for those of us who felt sleep deprivation was worth, we went out in search of penguins at 6 AM. And to make matters worse, we pushed our clocks up 1 hour (so that now we are 6 hours ahead of Thousand Oaks).
Gold Harbor has the 2nd largest King penguin colony on South Georgia. There are only 200,000 of them in all stages. The King penguins on this black sand beach are here all year, and the breeding season is all year. I saw adults, penguins molting, young penguins in full molt, and baby penguins hatched in the last 2-3 weeks. The King penguins share this space with fur seals, southern elephant seals (real giants, and the big males, or beach masters, here do not have the bulbous nose found on the ones that come ashore in California near Cambria). As the expedition leader said, elephant seals are everything that an 8 year old boy would love – there’s belching, farting, sand throwing and fights.
The King penguins are magnificent. And like the animals in the Galapagos, they are not afraid of man, frequently coming right up to you, making taking a picture of them impossible. And they make incredible noise, constantly calling out – it’s constant since there are so many of them.
In addition to the 6 AM landing, we also had 3 more hours with penguins. Then it was back to the ship and moving to Saint Andrews Bay where the largest population of Kings reside (400,000 – 500,000).
When all is said and done, there had to be ½ million King penguins at St. Andrews Bay. When we landed by zodiac it didn’t look that impressive, but walking a good half mile from where we landed, the sight was absolutely amazing. The penguins were packed in like was seen in ‘March of the Penguins’, only we didn’t have winter conditions. However, there was no sun, and we have really excellent weather throughout this trip (cool – never varying much between freezing and 40 degrees). And finally bad weather caught up with us, for it started to rain. At that point the cameras get put away, and it was back to the ship.
Most of the time when we got to shore, getting into the zodiac is no big deal. Lately though, it has been interesting, and fortunately the crew knows how to get everyone in the zodiacs without getting wet. The problem is that there have been 3-4 foot swells, so as you attempt to board, the zodiac drops away like a rock. Timing is everything, and I haven’t heard of a mishap yet.
Tomorrow is another day – destination unknown at this time.
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