Our trip is now complete. It’s time to skedaddle. But the trip isn’t over. It’s time to get back into our own lives, but we’ll bring this trip and its images in with us, where its perspective-setting power will continue expanding our view of life. Pulling from earlier daily postings, I’d like to offer a [...]
For two days we traveled westward from South Georgia in calm weather but dense fog, then arrived back in the Falkland Islands. On the outbound leg, the Falklands’ tree-less, rock-and-tussock profile seemed chilly and windswept. On our return, the same place seemed balmy and spring-like. The contrast between South Georgia, with its single songbird, and [...]
On our expedition’s last day on South Georgia, we went ashore on the narrowest part of the northwest coast, a wild, Lord-of-the-Rings landscape of steep rock-and-hummock slopes, howling winds and sheets of shrouding mists. This pilgrimage was prompted mainly by the chance for a visitation with nesting Gray-headed Albatrosses on the high slopes. The [...]
South Georgia is a very remote place. But with its history of whaling and whale ships, it’s not too far for rats to have reached. As on other oceanic islands where rats have reached, they’ve been devastating to the smaller seabirds. They’ve utterly wiped out the world’s southernmost songbird, the South Georgia Pipit, from much [...]
Salisbury Plain. A particularly stunning part of South Georgia’s generally stunning coast. South Georgia’s second-largest King Penguin colony, it seemed the Serengeti of penguins. We went ashore with spectacular dawn light sending a gleam across towering snow-capped crags, the white line of surf, the pearliness of penguin bellies, and enriching the gold wreaths of the [...]
In the morning our ship, National Geographic Explorer, dropped us off at a place called Maiviken, affording us a spectacular several-mile hike to a place called Grytviken. Grytviken is the site of another abandoned whaling station. And the site of Ernest Shackleton’s grave. It’s also got a small museum. No one really lives here, but [...]
Halloween found us in Fortuna Bay; dawn revealed a fog-shrouded South Georgia Island. Probably the scariest thing about this Halloween was news that the world’s human population is now 7 billion. The implications of this encompass everything. And while pundits and bloggers argue over whether rich or poor people are worst for the planet, I [...]
We came around to the island’s northeast side, planning for a dawn landing at Admiralty Bay, with its enormous colony of King Penguins. Alas, a large groundswell delivered a surf that precluded landing. Undaunted, we traveled over to Moultke Harbor, where we could get out of the swell. Here amid spectacular peaks of ice and [...]
We landed first in King Haakon Bay. Here, near the southwest corner of South Georgia, Ernest Shakleton and his rescue party landed on May 10, 1916 after their desperate, 800-mile trek in a re-fitted lifeboat to secure rescue for their crew left on Elephant Island. The bay here is ringed by Himalaya-like peaks clad in [...]
Last evening we left the Falklands with its pleasing person-to-sheep ratio (only 3,000 people live in the Falklands; we toured one person’s sheep ranch that occupies a mere 15,000 acres.). Before we were entirely clear of the islands, we crossed a commuter highway for thousands of Sooty Shearwaters that were headed back to their nesting [...]
Blue Ocean Institute