I had a brilliant night sleep and was up and to breakfast on time and out on the third zodiac at 0830. There was an initial delay for departure due to strong wind conditions. St Andrew’s Bay is stunning. It has a 6 mile long rocky beach backed by grassy rolling hills and snow capped mountains in the distance with two large glaciers at either end of the bay – Heaney Glacier to the right and Cook Glacier to the left with several rivers flowing out from each glacier. From the ship you could see thousands of King Penguins on the beach but as we got closer and closer the sheer number started to become apparent. There was only a small area where we could get out onto land and apart from that, there were penguins everywhere. There are 300,000 King Penguins at St Andrew’s Bay. Initially I wasn’t too sure where to go because there was so much to look at but decided to head to the colony first with Mandeep. It was raining so it seemed the logical thing to do. It was a bit of a minefield trying to get there because there were penguins, Fur Seals and Elephant Seals littered all over the place. We walked up and over several rolling hills and when we got to the colony; it was one of the most impressive sights I have ever seen. There were penguins for as far as the eye could see and the low hum of their chatter was priceless.
There were adults with eggs and fuzzy brown babies scattered everywhere. We sat for an hour watching them and eventually the rain stopped. At 1000 we headed back to the landing site for a photographic workshop. It was with Rod and Tom but as everyone have their favourite photographers, Mandeep, me and three others ended up walking with Tom and our workshop went to 1300. We learnt a lot about composition and how he decided what to photograph. We decided to head back to the landing site to pick up some lunch…and again, there were no vegie ones left so I ate a biscuit and watched the penguins surfing. Tom had another workshop at 1430 which I started at but there were lots of people who haven’t been to any workshops yet so they were asking a lot of questions that Mandeep and I have already covered so we decided to walk out to Heaney Glacier. It took so long to get there. We passed a herd of Reindeer with babies with them and large pools of water filled with penguins. We never quite made it to the base of the glacier because it was a lot further than what it appeared and we wanted to get back to the colony to watch the penguins.
We cross countried across to the colony, getting dive bombed by a Skua along the way and eventually made it to the colony. I sat there for a couple of hours watching penguin politics. They all nest quite close to each other and have to walk a very long way to get to the water to feed and along the way they get pecked and flipper slapped as they walk the gauntlet to get to water. The breeding pairs alternate incubating the egg so many of the nesting birds have their mate next to them waiting for the egg exchange. The pouches are amazing that they incubate the egg in. It makes them look like they have a beer belly. Eventually the wind got a bit too much so I headed back to the landing site. Along the way I stopped and watched the elephant Seals in their wallows (they are such beautiful animals) and watched the juveniles going through their major moult. They are quite skinny because their parents are no longer feeding them and they can’t go out and feed until they have fully moulted so they look a bit ragged compared to the feeding adults. The fuzzy babies are just hilarious. They look like they are wearing a huge fur jacket and they are really fat looking. They look like a kiwi fruit. Then there are others who are loosing their down and getting their real coat and they have fluffy scarves, fluffy jackets, fluffy headwear. It’s so cute. Some of them just follow their Mum around pecking at her for food and occasionally she’ll just flipper slap them and keep walking. I put my tri-pod down to take a photo of one of the moulting penguins and when I picked it up, one of the legs fell off. So I will see if I can take it back to the shop I bought it from in Buenos Aires and hope they give me money back.
Once back at the landing site I just sat and watched the penguins sitting on the shore and the few brave ones that venture up to the bags and where you are sitting and look at you and try and peck your feet and then they’ll suddenly turn around and waddle away back to where their friends are. The wind really picked up so I decided to go back and caught the second last zodiac back to the ship at 1820. It was a very choppy ride back and took ages to clean the boots because there was so much poo on them. Dinner was at 1900 and because I didn’t eat lunch, I was so hungry. I ate so much and managed to order an extra main. It was so good. I returned to my cabin straight after dinner and repaired my tri-pod with a paper clip and some gaffa tape and went to bed.
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