Today was a great day. After breakfast we started landing in at Fortuna Bay. A large bay with black pebbly beaches, green grass and snow capped glacial mountains in the background. I spent most of the day watching the King Penguins and their chicks and saw my first ever King Penguin egg. The penguins were scattered all over the place fighting for walking space along with the Fur Seals. There were quite a few glacial stream fed pools of water which were basically baby Fur Seal paddling pools. There would have been at least 100 babies swimming and playing in one pool alone. If you stand there long enough watching them they come out and stand next to you. Some practice being big seals by growling at you but they are just so cute with their huge brown eyes and fuzzy coats. The adults are a bit scarier to walk past because they do charge forward so you have to stop and stare them down. It’s like playing statues half the time. You stop, turn around and there will be a seal right behind you who will stop dead still and pretend not to look at you and then when you turn around again and start walking, they are running along behind you. Apparently a few tourists have been bitten in the past few years so you have to have eyes in the back of your head to ensure they don’t nip you with the massive sharp teeth.
There were reindeer everywhere here. I can’t believe I’ve seen reindeer. They were introduced here and they plan to remove them in the next few years because they eat all the grass and basically remove the habitat needed for so many species. I took some photos of them, although they are going through their moult now so they look a bit mangy. I saw one baby blonde Fur Seal. It was so cute. I walked up a hill next to a waterfall, dodging Fur Seals the whole way up to see a Light-mantled Sooty Albatross nesting. They are really beautiful birds. The detailing in the colouring is amazing. Getting back down the hill was a lot harder than going up. The number of Fur Seals seemed to multiply and they really don’t like you walking past them.
I returned to the landing site and grabbed a packed lunch and then walked in the opposite direction to see the Elephant Seals. They are so cute with their big blubbery slug like bodies and huge teddy bear eyes. On the way back to the landing site I passed Doug who was trying to photograph some baby fur Seals but they were so curious as to what he was doing they started playing with his shoes. It was so cute.
At 1400 they started ferrying those of us who wanted to hike over to the other side of the bay. The beach was only small and again covered in Fur Seals. I really needed to go to the toilet and asked Marlene, one of the staff where I could go so she directed me to a rock pool and some tussock grass, but when I got there it was full of baby Fur Seals so I didn’t go. We set off on the hike straight up the mountain. The hike was the last 5.5 km of Shackleton, Crean and Worsley’s epic self-rescue from the sinking of the HMS Endurance. It was a lovely walk and we had a group photo taken at the top of the mountain, as well as eating several blocks of Cadburys chocolate. I walked the whole way with Matt and Laura, the Aussie couple from Cronulla. I managed to find a spot to go to the toilet, but at the same time managed to loose my beanie. I was hoping someone behind would find it, but no one did. So now I am without any head covering for the rest of the trip.
The staff was saying that in every past trip the walk used to be covered in ice and snow and they used to walk over the lakes because they were frozen, but now there was no snow anywhere along the walk. Towards the end of the hike we had great views over the remains of the whaling station at Stromness. We walked down to the waterfall where Shackleton went to get down to the bay to have a look. Those who didn’t do the hike we transported around there by the ship. Matt, Laura and I chose to walk up a hill to the bay (as opposed to walking along the river) and we came across a Gentoo Penguin colony right on the top. There weren’t many penguins there, but they all had chicks who were hassling them for food. One Mum just pecked her babies and ran away, but they persevered and followed her, pecking at her every time they got close enough. We saw another herd of Reindeer and as we got closer to the bay and whaling station, the number of Fur Seals picked up to the point where you had to keep turning around to make sure you weren’t going to get bitten by one. You can no longer go into the whaling station because it’s been declared an asbestos hazard but you could walk around some of the propellers that were on the edges of the station. There were baby Fur Seals climbing all over the propellers and old chains. It was like a Fur Seal playground.
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