Wednesday 16th March; 17th day at sea
The first landing was on Barren Island, which was quite aptly named. Largely flat, with loads of birds (including a Striated Carra Carra – a large bird of prey), plus Elephant Seals, at least one South Atlantic Sea Lion, and numerous Magellanic Penguins mostly hiding in burrows. At the time most people thought it might have been better to have missed this island, gone straight to our next landing and then third landing in the afternoon, though with hindsight this would have been a mistake. What we had here was a brisk hike across moorland, followed by a slightly more leisurely hike back to the landing site, during which I glimpsed a penguin in it’s burrow – but it was too dark to get a photo without using the flash. After that we were taken in the zodiacs to George Island, where there was a farm, to be shown sheep shearing and have tea and cakes – as if we hadn’t been eating more than enough already. Very nice cakes though – I had several to make sure of that.
The farm visit was really quite interesting; the farm had quite a lot of sheep on its 28,000 acres which was quite small by Falklands standards. It also had tourism as a sideline, plus fishing for crabs, and the farmer’s wife had a job in Stanley during the week. Again, the people were very easy to talk to, despite us turning up, plus the complement of the Polar Pioneer the same afternoon.
In the afternoon we headed off to Sea Lion Island, passing the Polar Pioneer on the way, who passed us details of the landing site they’d used on Sea Lion Island. Unfortunately by the time we got there the wind had picked up and the sea was getting rougher. The first zodiac with the expedition staff got ashore, and the first passenger zodiac followed. We were in the third one, and were the third and fourth passengers to get on. By now the sea was rising a falling several feet with the swell, and only occasionally being sheltered by the ship. The fifth person, Big Ron from the US, tried to get on, but clearly couldn’t and I started to get a little worried. I would happily have traded places with any of the rest of the passengers who were watching from the ship’s rail. Our zodiac was cast off from the ship, which made things a lot better, as the boat could ride out the swell quite easily as long as no one was doing anything stupid like trying to get into it.
Meanwhile, on the shore, interesting things were happening. The second zodiac, we heard later, had been turned sideways and hit by a wave, which tipped it over, giving a couple of people an early bath. Given the circumstances the landing was abandoned. Oddly, our driver, Anja, who hadn’t impressed a number of people, including me (she was the driver for the trip back from Stanley) was really very good about the whole escapade. She kept apologising for the landing having to be cancelled; we were rather relieved to get back on the ship, which didn’t take half so long as getting into the zodiac. Dave Bowman, who was driving another of the zodiacs, didn’t seem to be terribly impressed by the whole thing. At one point, before we got in the zodiac, you could see him having a conversation with two other drivers and he seemed to think then, that the landing was a bad idea.
After this landing was abandoned, we set off for South America, though we saw several dolphins around the bow of the ship and a Southern Right Whale surface to leave little messages for us! I didn’t manage to get any photos of these, as the light was pretty poor by now.
By the evening there was a distinct end of term atmosphere about the ship. People were standing in corridors chatting and the evening’s entertainment was a hoot. A film of a 1929 journey in a sailing bark around Cape Horn, narrated by the cameraman, who’d signed on as an ordinary seaman, followed by a repeat of Don’s photo sequence.
The farm visit was really quite interesting; the farm had quite a lot of sheep on its 28,000 acres which was quite small by Falklands standards. It also had tourism as a sideline, plus fishing for crabs, and the farmer’s wife had a job in Stanley during the week. Again, the people were very easy to talk to, despite us turning up, plus the complement of the Polar Pioneer the same afternoon.
In the afternoon we headed off to Sea Lion Island, passing the Polar Pioneer on the way, who passed us details of the landing site they’d used on Sea Lion Island. Unfortunately by the time we got there the wind had picked up and the sea was getting rougher. The first zodiac with the expedition staff got ashore, and the first passenger zodiac followed. We were in the third one, and were the third and fourth passengers to get on. By now the sea was rising a falling several feet with the swell, and only occasionally being sheltered by the ship. The fifth person, Big Ron from the US, tried to get on, but clearly couldn’t and I started to get a little worried. I would happily have traded places with any of the rest of the passengers who were watching from the ship’s rail. Our zodiac was cast off from the ship, which made things a lot better, as the boat could ride out the swell quite easily as long as no one was doing anything stupid like trying to get into it.
Meanwhile, on the shore, interesting things were happening. The second zodiac, we heard later, had been turned sideways and hit by a wave, which tipped it over, giving a couple of people an early bath. Given the circumstances the landing was abandoned. Oddly, our driver, Anja, who hadn’t impressed a number of people, including me (she was the driver for the trip back from Stanley) was really very good about the whole escapade. She kept apologising for the landing having to be cancelled; we were rather relieved to get back on the ship, which didn’t take half so long as getting into the zodiac. Dave Bowman, who was driving another of the zodiacs, didn’t seem to be terribly impressed by the whole thing. At one point, before we got in the zodiac, you could see him having a conversation with two other drivers and he seemed to think then, that the landing was a bad idea.
After this landing was abandoned, we set off for South America, though we saw several dolphins around the bow of the ship and a Southern Right Whale surface to leave little messages for us! I didn’t manage to get any photos of these, as the light was pretty poor by now.
By the evening there was a distinct end of term atmosphere about the ship. People were standing in corridors chatting and the evening’s entertainment was a hoot. A film of a 1929 journey in a sailing bark around Cape Horn, narrated by the cameraman, who’d signed on as an ordinary seaman, followed by a repeat of Don’s photo sequence.
posted by Iain Burke at 30.1.06
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