Danzenbaker Tour Journal: Day Two in South Georgia

January 7: Fortuna Bay and the Shackleton hike.
 
Light rain was already falling as we woke for our 6am landing in Fortuna Bay.  This beautiful site is has much to offer. It is ideal for a first glimpse of South Georgia wildlife – just enough Fur Seals to felt it necessary to arm ourselves with protective poles, a fairly small colony (17,000 pairs) of King Penguins, Southern Elephant Seals, several nesting Light-mantled Sooty Albatrosses, Brown Skuas, Antarctic Terns, and Reindeer. 

The Polar Star anchored in Fortuna Bay.  Thankfully, she was never anchored far from our landing site which made zodiac runs to shore short and relatively spray free.

Upon landing, my first job was to find a nesting Light-mantled Sooty Albatross, so I ascended a close gully to scan the moss-lined cliff ledges where they typically nest. Thankfully, this year’s search was quick – a lone bird sitting on a nest on a ledge. While it provided a nice view for the entire group, but the photographers wanting. In addition to being 115 feet way on a grassy hill, steady rain made it near impossible to capture a good image. 

The view from the hill provided a window into life on the beach below. Many energetic fur seals played while the more serious King Penguins waddled by. It would seem that the fur seals could whack a penguin at any time, launching it into the air like a bowling pin, but the one close encounter that I saw ended with the penguin as the victor. It continually its long sharp bill at the fur seal until the seal eventually lost interest and moved on to brawl with another fur seal...South Georgia charm! 

I eventually moved down to the King Penguin colony and enjoyed my time with them. Many Kings stood around patiently, each with an egg balanced on its feet, exposing the egg occasionally when preening breast and belly feathers.  It’s amazing to watch a King Penguin scratch the top of its head with a flipper while keeping the egg on its precarious perch on the feet.
 
Oakum boys (10-14 month old King Penguin chicks) were everywhere around the outer edge of the colony. I couldn’t help smiling and laughing at their serious nature but strange brown plumage. Old chicks, with most of the brown down already shed, walked around with mohawk hairdos, brown hairy chests, and brown neck ruffs. These curious oakum boys pecked at my gloves (with hands inside) and tripod trying desperately to feed on something since the parents had largely stopped feeding them and started their next breeding cycle.

Polysyllabic trumpeting from courting birds, the slapping of flapping flippers of rival courters for the same female, the weak whistling from ochum boys, and the weird short bugle sound from older oakum boys whose voices seemingly just cracked formed a cacophony of sound that carried across the entire colony. Relatively new to the landscape are the growing herds of reindeer, which on previous visits stayed at least 75 yards away – a fear of man stemming from years of being hunted. They are no longer hunted, thus the hard-wired wariness about humans seems to have faded away. Nowadays, reindeer sometimes come within 25 yards of camera lenses. I wondered if the reindeer had anything to do with the relatively few Antarctic Terns that were in the area. The terns nest on the ground and I saw reindeer repeatedly stampede through the nesting habitat, potentially destroying tern nests and chicks.
 
I decided to return to the ship for lunch as I was getting a bit chilled from the increasing wind and the rain that had turned to occasional snow squalls. A hearty bowl of soup went down well!

At the abandoned Stromness whaling station seen above, buildings continue to deteriorate and the area is now inhabited by Fur Seals. The triangular-roofed structure immediately to the right of the large building on the left side of the photo is where Shackleton first made contact with the station manager. Apparently, after Shackleton introduced himself, tears filled the eyes of the station manager, who believed that the Shackleton party had been lost forever.

 
The afternoon was, as always, filled. Today, I joined 20 other hikers on the Shackleton walk, linking Fortuna Bay to Stromness and retracing the final steps of Sir Earnest Shackleton’s epic voyage of in the mid 1910s. Shackleton first defied the odds by even finding South Georgia in the "James Caird," the last functioning lifeboat of the "Endurance." Then, he and two others hiked across South Georgia making their way to Fortuna Bay, just one bay off from where they had wanted to end up. They then headed south over a pass to Stromness, the nearest whaling station. This last 3.3-mile walk is what we hiked. Occasional snow squalls and ice pellets just added to the ambiance of the walk and our appreciation of what Shackleton must have endured. It was exhilarating to think that we were walking in his footsteps. The walk included a 300-foot long glissading slide, which certainly cut off a few minutes off of our travel time down from the lofty pass.

I was relieved to finally reach the glacial plane that comprises the final half-mile stretch before Stromness, where zodiacs awaited. Even Gentoo Penguins, Fur Seals and Antarctic Terns couldn’t deter me from reaching the landing beach. While loading passengers into the zodiacs, I noticed a Chinstrap Penguin on the beach. There’s something about Chinnies having their own journeys of discovery – one often appears at a colony of King Penguins, Gentoos, or Macaronis.  It was good to get back to the ship for a nice hot meal and pleasant conversation.