James’ and Sara’s Excellent Antarctica Adventure

Day 7: The amazing South Georgia island

Firstly some stats on the boat in response to Les’s questions:

There are: 182 passengers (can take no more than 200 in the Antarctic); 178 crew; 12 zodiacs; 10 e-bikes and mountain bikes; 8 two person kayaks and 9 stand up paddle boards, 2 helicopters and 2 tenders

Captain Cook was the first to land on South Georgia island in 1775. He thought he had discovered Antarctica until he found he had only discovered a long narrow island. The point where Cook turned the corner to find this was an island and not Antarctica is called Cape Disappointment.

Sealers only knew about South Georgia because of Cook’s account of the island and they arrived in 1786. Most sealers were American or British. Fur seals were almost wiped out by the sealers, and they were essentially extinct by 1825, so the sealers left.

The fur seal population has now recovered to its pre 1800 level…..around 4.5-5m and mainly live on South Georgia. They are very cute

Here they are playing near the waters edge. The blonde one amongst them is unusual…..this coloured seal only occurs 1 in 1000 times

This seal was very curious and walked right up to one of the passengers to check her out

There are thousands of king penguins on South Georgia ……total breeding population is 450,000 pairs. We visited Salisbury Plain and saw 60,000 pairs. The rookery is amazing

Here’s some king penguins wacking each other…..not sure why!!!

And here’s a sense of the landscape we are seeing….

Of course it’s not all peaches and cream on South Georgia…….this chick wandered off from the rookery and didn’t survive

And the petrel bird was not happy when the king penguin tried to say hi!

We took some great videos but having trouble loading them so this is what you are getting for now!