Last of South Georgia

For our last stop on this fabulous island, we did a Zodiac tour of Elsehul, which is an inlet in the extreme NW tip of the island that has colonies of penguins and albatrosses high on the cliffs. But first, we did a quick sail through Prince Olav Harbour, which also had a whaling station. I took these pictures…

… just because the bay had such a stunning backdrop…

… and only when I looked at them more closely, could I see the whaling station at the foot of the mountain in the picture above.

Our main stop that day was Elsehul, and the weather was much more dreary there. However, it didn’t bother me for the close-ups I tried to get of Macaroni Penguins…

… as they hopped up the cliffs past fur seals… (sorry it’s a little blurry, but I liked the hop that I caught that last one in)

For those who might wonder about the similarities or differences between Macaroni…

… and Rockhopper Penguins –

You can probably see that the Macaronis have a bigger bill, and their crest is more orange and starts in front of the eyes, in contrast to the little spear of yellow coming out from behind the eyes of the Rockhoppers.

Moving onto Imperial Cormorants…

… nest building and courting was in full swing…

… as it was with the Light-mantled Albatross –

(check out their eye “make-up”)

I know most of you are not birders, but we saw so many beautiful and unique birds on this trip that I couldn’t help but share some of the pics with you. So for those of you who might be more into seals, here’s a very happy (or tired?) male Elephant Seal with his large harem (which nearly all had new pups) -

After this, we headed out to sea, on our way to Antarctica. This crossing was nearly 3 full days and nights, and was pretty rough. Early on, we passed a large iceberg…

… that had some gorgeous striations on top, and stark geometries left over from calving pieces –

Check out the penguins (tiny black specks) who hitched a ride, giving a stark scale to this behemoth –

On the day before arriving in Antarctica, we were supposed to pass by the largest iceberg in the world, which is roughly the size of Puerto Rico.  However, it was very foggy, and we couldn’t risk getting any closer than 4 miles from it, due to the likelihood that it was calving a bunch of icebergs.  We were told that super large icebergs create their own weather due to the fact that they are so large and much colder than the surrounding water, thus creating fog.

I don’t have a great picture for a blog closer, but on a nice sunny day, I took this picture of (actually small) waves beside our boat –

Next post is Antarctica!