January 31
Bill woke us up once again promising humpback whales at
one o'clock, but only very few people believed him at this point. I peeked out
of the window on my way back from the bathroom and other than a few skeptical
passengers I saw only fog - no whales. So at breakfast the announcement was the
center of discussion - most people thought that it was a hoax.
After breakfast we immediately got into the Zodiacs and were shuttled to Hannah
Island, home of some seals as well as penguins - Chinstraps, Gentoo and
reportedly a few Macaroni. As we landed the weather didn't seem to be able to
decide whether to show the sun or not, but at least it was not too windy. We
quickly passed through the colony of Chinstraps and headed towards the Gentoo.
In the middle we could indeed spot one Macaroni penguin - standing all alone,
without a mate or children. He (or she) was just standing there in the middle of
a big war zone, as all the penguins seemed to be battling one another; it was a
crazy place. Parents were very caring of their own offspring but beating the
crap out of other young, and also arguing among each other. The Macaroni was
just standing still observing the madness. But things were good for him -
Fishbone found his / her mate, who was just coming back home from the water. So
we had two Macaronis among thousands of Chinstraps and Gentoo. As Essan said,
they look like the surfer dudes of the penguins.
Click on the first image to start a slide show for this day (65
pictures)
Images shown below are a small selection.
In slide show, click on image to return to index.
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In the Gentoo colony one could observe another war: this time it was not parents against others' kids but rather against their own. The almost mature chicks - some of them bigger than their half starved parents - were still demanding food from their parents, who frequently had to run away from their own offspring. It seemed that the last resort was always the water, where the young would refuse to go. On the other hand, the young didn't seem to care much about the visitors, and were rather social. One of them even picked on my lens as I was taking a picture of him. So yesterday I had whale snot on the lens, today it was penguin nose goo. How lovely.
The most obvious animal on this island was however the
elephant seal. A whole group of females was stretched out on the hill, smelling
like the worst pig sty you can imagine. They were there for weeks, camping in
their own urine and feces, waiting to finish molting. During this time they are
very lazy and irritable, and indeed there was quite some arguments between them.
Bottom line, the whole island was populated by angry animals enjoying the last
few weeks of the short summer.
The
trip from the island to the ship was short but wet; the sea had swelled and
waves were splashing us and our equipment. I got a particularly good dose of sea
water onto myself and mainly my camera gear. It's good that Canon designed the
EOS-1 series with weather in mind, and so even though soaking wet everything
worked just as new.
Lunch featured lamb, so I opted for the vegetarian route. First I ate a whole
bowl of slaw, intended for 6 people and then some - but since nobody was really
interested I ate pretty much all of it (and regretted it hours later). After
lunch we made our last landing on Deception Island, an old whaling station. The
stories about it were already repulsive enough, and the landing was at least in
my opinion not one of the best or most interesting: the ruins of an old whaling
station aren't what I came here for, but then this was a popular request so I
guess I was in the minority. My main complaint was that since this was the last
excursion of the trip it was pretty anti-climatic. The most exciting part was
probably watching some people, including members of the Russian crew, take a dip
in the warm pools at the shore - naturally warm water since this is after all a
dormant volcano.
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We
were all very concerned about Annie's health: the usual happy announcement that
it's 7:30 and thus dinner is being served didn't happen. So people only slowly
trickled into the dining hall, all expressing their worries about Annie. There
is some advantage to generally not eating fish: when you are served one and it's
bad, you can't tell. So happened to me at dinner: of the four choices the fish
was the least suspicious one, so I ordered one, and actually ate all of it.
Others at the table who ordered the same were done with it rather quickly,
though, saying that it was pretty bad. I had no such complaints, other than the
fact that it was fish of course. But the dessert - white chocolate mousse -
clearly made up for it. At this point the biggest problem for many is however
not the quality of food but rather how to be able to hold it. Tonight we are
entering the Drake Passage, heading back to Ushuaia, and the seas seem to be a
tad rougher this time around. Pretty much everyone is wearing the anti-sick
patch on their neck as a precaution, but I am contemplating removing it since
the side effects - most importantly the super dry throat which doesn't seem to
be helped with anything - are rather annoying.
We concluded the day by watching "Journey to the Sea of Ice", a documentary by
our own John & Janet Foster, who seem to be very happy with the results of their
filming efforts from this trip; especially yesterday's whale encounter gave them
enough footage for another Discovery production, so they say. Who knows, maybe
we will make it as extras onto national TV - I am the one with the dorky yellow
hat.