Today marks our last full day on this amazing island; tomorrow we start steaming southwest towards Deception Island and Antarctica. Yesterday's excursions on shore combined more incredible animal viewing with moments of poignant history. We hiked out from the long abandoned Norwegian whaling station, across swampy, open terrain to the base of a waterfall. It was this spot where Ernest Shackleton and his two companions stumbled down from the snow capped peaks and made their way to the whaling station to seek help for their comrades. We stood at the exact spot where they came over the last rise and, seeing the station in the distance on the coastal plain, knew that they had made it. Our guides also pointed out the little wooden house into which the explorer stepped and announced, "I am Shackleton!" Pretty amazing.
I also had my closest and most exciting encounter yesterday with a fur seal pup. I squatted down and just say quietly for several minutes, and finally this little guy -- looking like a ten-week old black lab puppy with really floppy feet -- came right up to my left boot. His eyes were these huge, bluish opaque disks, and big whiskers sprouted from his pointy nose. His yawn revealed a set of sharp, bright white canine teeth, but he wasn't aggressive at all. He just sort of nosed my boot and looked at me. Man, I wanted to pick him up and hug him! I know I have taken about a billion pictures of seal pups, but each one is special!
There have also been some moments of nature at her more graphic best. A whole flock of giant petrels swooped down and landed on the water near our zodiac to feed on the carcass of a king penguin. (Not sure what had killed it originally.) They were having a good tugging away at it until a fur seal slipped up from below and swam off with the whole thing. The petrels squawked and flapped their wings in protest, but the seal just leapt away, leaving bits of penguin in its wake.
We have also seen herds of reindeer galloping across the hillsides. They had been brought in by Norwegian whalers over a century ago. There is debate over what to do with them -- as a non-native species they can hurt the ecosystem and threaten other animals (they sometimes crush the nests of birds that nest in shallow burrows), but their numbers haven't gotten out of hand, and some people feel that after a hundred years, they might as well be considered part of the environment.
Later today we off to a science station and the only inhabitated spot on the island. Everyone plans on sending a postcard from the world's southern-most post office!
Cheers to everyone!
-Jim Fornshell
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