James’ and Sara’s Excellent Antarctica Adventure

Day 10: South Orkney islands

We are now officially in the Antartica. Even the coffee says so

The climate of the South Orkney Islands is said to be generally cold, wet and windy. It’s certainly cold ( about -1 deg C to -3 deg C) but the sun is shining and it’s not very windy. So we are pretty lucky to be here. Only one of the Scenic Eclipse crew members has ever been here before, so this is a discovery for almost all of the 360 people aboard.

View from the bridge first thing this morning before sun came out
Sun has now come out!

We took zodiacs to the beach at Stygian Cove to find fur seals, elephant seals and a few gentoo penguins. Sara took a slow walk to the lake. James joined the group who took a short hike around the lake.

Here’s some of the elephant and fur seals ..the elephant seals are male and are bigger than the ones we saw a couple of days ago…probably weigh close to 3 tonnes

You can just make out the yellowish looking elephant seals lying like big blobs on the beach
This fur seal is having a kip! I know you have all been hanging out to learn how to tell an elephant seal from a fur seal….well the fur seal has little ear flaps!!
Couldn’t resist taking more shots of he fur seals at play

And I knew that you would all be interested in understanding why there is red poo scattered around. It’s because all the seals and penguins eat krill as part of their diet and krill is red coloured!!

The red colour really stands out against the white and gray landscape

We are now starting to see icebergs and the odd whale. Couldn’t help but take pictures of these icebergs bathed in sunlight

You could swear that these are houses on the horizon
Doesn’t this look like a ship?

In the afternoon we did a zodiac cruise along the largest island in the group, Coronation island, so named to mark the coronation of King George IV. You can see that james is eminently more comfortable than me in the zodiac!

For the first time, we saw Weddell seals and leopard seals, as well as a raft(colony )of chinstrap penguins.

A wallow of Weddell seals
Weddell seal, up close and personal

We also saw a few Leopard seals (they have spots on the skin) which are apparently hard to find. Usually you are lucky to see 1-2 on the whole trip. We saw 3 and one was very playful and dived in and around our zodiac. Very cool

And for the bird lovers amongst us, here is a giant petrel

And we continue to stalk the Getaway crew who were trying to film the same leopard seal as us


Finally last night we went to the sushi restaurant for dinner.

This painting is at the entrance to the sushi restaurant.
Here’s James with the chef, Marlon, who makes special dishes for james !

And for Anne (and Simon), here’s picture of the whisky bar which has around 130 different whiskies

awaywiththebirds

,

5 responses to “James’ and Sara’s Excellent Antarctica Adventure”

  1. Still trying to chose what wiskey I should order…it’ll take a while,
    Nice touch with coffee.
    So far everything seems to go like clockwork.

  2. Have I missed something -surely the difference between an Elephant Seal & a Fur seal – isn’t the size of the ear flaps – what about the weight! PS Tip for James – keep eating the krill.