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| Who doesn't love gnomes! |
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| Even, close up of gnomes! |
(Still Kathy) It was time to get back to the ship and we decided we had just enough time to walk but then it started to rain again and we managed to get a little lost. As we were walking, I had
visions of being the passengers who held up the ship from leaving on time! I was pretty sure they wouldn't leave us behind but was also pretty sure we would be regaled (but not in a good way) at the evening out-brief. Luckily we made it back in time! As we left port (within minutes of us getting back on the ship - whew, that was close!) we passed the Cape Pembroke Lighthouse, one of several lighthouses on the island.
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| Tough Looking Ship . . . who's the dude in the yellow parka? |
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| View of the lighthouse on our way back out to sea |
That evening we discovered that our soaked tennis shoes and jeans dried very
nicely overnight in the bathroom – shoes on the heated floor and jeans hung in
the shower. The Quark provided parka
kept our upper bodies warm and dry. Lesson learned, wear your water proof pants next time going to shore.
What a fabulous day!!
21 Dec 24: Sea Day
4 - Heading to South Georgia Islands
(Randy) Today should
be quite a catch-up day. Maybe even a
recovery day after yesterday’s full day at Stanley. On the docket we’ve got a couple of
presentations to attend.
The first is Blooming Beauties which covers some
special and unique way plants have adapted to freezing their butts off in this part of the world. The theme was a little crunchy in that it
predominantly focused on the harm of “invasive” species, which is legit, but
IMHO, somewhere along the line everything was probably an invasive species and it’s often the continuation of the existing order for everything to do whatever
it can to survive.
This was followed by Penguins
– A Natural History presentation, which was really good. It focused on the evolution and behavior of
the species, especially those we hope to encounter over the coming days. We’ve always known that they are members of
the bird family, but one of the really neat things the presenter postulated
addressed the future evolution of penguins. Things
like will they evolve to become more like fish (they already spend most of
their time in the water) or more like marine
mammals, such as whales, that give live birth in the water? I never really thought about it (why would
I), but I found it interesting.
Then we had a mandatory International Association of
Antarctic Travel Organizations (IAATO) briefing. I anticipated this would be yet another
crunchy briefing, but it was, once again, quite good. The focus was the ship’s compliance with
South Georgia Island’s mandates regarding protection from invasive
species. It included some of the same
themes as the Blooming Beauties presentation, but included some pretty
impressive examples of damages caused by invasive species, some of which are microscopic. Even more impressive was the results of the
safeguards put in place to return the affected areas to the original condition.
This event was followed up by yet another mandatory
Biosecurity Procedures session. In this beauty
we have to bring any outer clothing (boots, hats, gloves, jackets, etc.) and sit down with one of the Quark team members (in our case the Quark doctor) and learn how to clean our outer items each time we come back to the ship and before we leave the ship. Sounds pretty tedious, but in
the end it’s probably a very good idea.
We follow this up by signing the “Biosecurity Agreement”. I suspect this is to hold you accountable
when brought up on Environment Terrorism charges at the International Court at
the Hague.
Lastly, a presentation about the history of South Georgia
Island which was interesting.
A bit later Beanie & I were walking Deck 5, the only outside
deck that goes entirely around the ship, when we heard a special announcement, The
Great Scotia Sea Beer Tasting will commence on Deck 7 in five minutes! Well as much as we hated to not get our steps
in, we thought we owed it to the ship to be sociable. We thought there might be some type of event
as yesterday we shared a ship’s shuttle with Ryan, the Expedition Leader, and
he told us that he had been into town earlier that day and picked up 3 duffle
bags full of beer. Of course, my first
thought was there has to be something better than a duffle bag to drag around
beer. Anyway the event was a big success
with the ship providing various cheeses, meats, and crackers to go with a huge variety of beers. Another point of interest is the gentlemen doing the pouring are the two helicopter pilots and the head mechanic! Talk about multi talented!
After dinner there is sometimes a presentation called Bar
Talk. Tonight’s presentation
was entitled Returning to the Falklands.
It was the story of a personal pilgrimage by one of the two helicopter pilots,
Adam. His
presentation started out very lighthearted focusing on tongue-in-cheek military
jokes, etc. My favorite anecdote started
out with a question. He, being a
pilot, asked the question “How do you know if someone is a pilot?” All my veteran friends will know the answer
to this question. He then presented a
slide depicting a grave-side burial ceremony.
On the slide the preacher states, “Does anyone have any last
words?” A man raises his hand and states,
“I’m a pilot” That’s how you know
someone is a pilot – he will tell you!!
The presentation then got a little more solemn as he shared his
story. Adam is British and he was assigned in the Falklands during the war in 1982. He and his buddy were there, single, and
trying to find a way to get girls from home to write them. Remember, this is pre-internet/email, so they
wrote to their hometown newspaper’s equivalent of a Lonely Hearts Club column. They got thousands of responses from which he
wrote to one young lady. They ended up
as life-long friends. To make the
friendship even more enduring he ended up trying to find out the story behind
the story regarding the combat death of this girl’s brother in the
Falklands during the war. He made finding out what
happened a life-long pursuit. He spent
many years working and researching this incident and finally developed a lead
and connection with a local military historian in Port Stanley. This man’s assistance combined
with all his research allowed him to yesterday, during our day in port, retrace the brother’s final mission
and determine how the girl’s brother was killed. He presented a slide show of how the day unfolded. The sad side is his death was a friendly fire
incident. The good side is the family
now knows the circumstances, though tragic, under which he was killed and their
questions have been answered.
(Kathy) We had some
excellent presentations today. The
mandatory ones (for example safety related and dealing with what to do/not do
on shore once we start doing zodiac landings and biosecurity) you have to attend in the
theater, the non-mandatory ones you can livestream on your cabin TV. It’s worthwhile to go to the theater and
experience the presentations in person to see the videos and slide show on the
large screen. The speakers have all been
very good and as a plus some have an excellent sense of humor – after all we
are on vacation. My two favorite lecturers are Fabrice and Marla. Fabrice is an Ornithologist who specializes in birds of the polar regions. I love his French accent and he's not hard on the eyes either. Marla is a Marine Biologist and has a wonderful sense of humor and so much enthusiasm.
Adam's presentation was totally unexpected and excellent. I don't know how he managed to get it all organized and ready to present to us that evening. Lots of talent from this Quark crew.
Even the sea days are jam packed.
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| Beanie said she wishes she had a better pic of Fabrice - I say, can you pick him out of the lineup??? |
22 Dec 24: Sea Day
5: Heading to South Georgia Islands
(Kathy) We continue on our way to South Georgia Island today. We woke up to good size seas, which got a bit
rougher as the day progressed, with mostly cloudy skies. Everyone was waddling about like penguins
trying to stay upright as the ship bobbed and weaved. About noon, most people were in the theater
enjoying another presentation when Ryan announced over the PA that there was an
iceberg off the starboard side. We all
went as quickly as possible (which wasn’t very quickly since we were trying to
stay upright!) to the windows on that side.
OMG, it was huge and just surreal to see it. Randy and I then went to our cabin to see it
from our balcony. The sun came out and
it just glowed in the sunlight. We were
moving in the opposite direction as it was.
As it moved it also rotated so we saw several sides of it. It was so big that it took probably half an
hour to pass it. Plus I think the Captain
slowed the ship a bit so we could enjoy it.
We heard later that the Captain had seen it on radar and so steered us
near it. It seemed very close. Later I talked to one of the Quark team and
he said it was iceberg A76b. It is
currently about the size of Los Angeles. Icebergs larger than 40 square miles are
given a number as a name and the little letter b means that it has split in
half once. When this iceberg was whole
it was the largest iceberg in the world but after it split in half, A23a became
the largest at 1418 square miles, slightly larger than Rhode Island. Wow, just wow, seeing our first
iceberg! And not just any iceberg but
this huge beauty. We're hoping we get a chance to see A23a later in the trip. That would be the cherry on top!
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| Randy trying to shoot a video under some "sporty" conditions! |
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| View from our balcony |
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| View as we pass the end - it took a while!! |
(Randy) Today’s agenda is light for us. The ocean kayakers however are busy with
several briefings to get ready for their first kayaking tomorrow. Kayaking on the surface seems like it would
be a lot of fun, but in practice the thought of my puny little kayak rolling
over in below freezing water just doesn’t have a high level of appeal to me. Beanie covered the day's highlight of seeing A76b. Not bad for our first iceberg sighting!
The closer we get to South Georgia the more seals swimming around
the ship. They are hard to spot due to
the high seas and the fact they spend most of the time underwater. We have gotten a few glimpses
of them which of course drives the crowd wild.
We had another briefing relating to the History of Sealing, Whaling, and
Penguin-Keeping in South Georgia. It’s
an amazing story of how initially the sealing industry started and then gave
way to whaling. The original whaling was
small boats, men with harpoons, moving about the ocean under incredibly severe
conditions. Once the word of just how
many whales were in these seas and how accessible they were to hunt, the
industry exploded. The worldwide demand
for whale oil was skyrocketing which made it even more profitable. Smaller boats gave way to larger ships and whaling stations started be built throughout South Georgia Islands. The first station, Grytviken, was built in 1904 and in its first six months it processed 185 whales – and the whale ships never left the bay! Whale stations
from Norway, Japan and other countries were built. Soon
the whale stations were rendered obsolete when whale ships capable of
completely processing the whale at sea were commissioned. In 1961, the peak of whale hunting, 185,000
whales were killed for their oil. With the advent of petroleum by products and
the growing rage against whaling, the world decided to call BS and
international whale hunting was banned worldwide except by Japan who joined the
agreement a few years after. The last whaling station in South Georgia closed on 1965. We hope to make a landing at Grytviken.
And speaking of whales, we had our first sightings today – not great ones, but a start. A
couple of humpbacks about a 100 yards off the ship. These were the best shots I could get with my
iphone, but be sure to turn up the volume. It really makes you appreciate just how noisy the wind and sea can get.
23 Dec 24: Welcome
to the South Georgia Islands
(Kathy) We woke up to
views of South Georgia Island. Oh my, I felt like
I was dreaming to finally see this place.
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| Woke up to this view of South Georgia from our balcony - sweet |
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| As we got closer you can really appreciate how rugged and beautiful the coastline is |
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| Nice glacier - there will be lots more when we get to Antarctica - in the hundreds! |
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| A closer shot - 100s of feet tall |
So many seals surrounded the ship, it was like a welcoming committee. Even though we were still quite a distance from the island you can hear the sounds of all the animals on shore.
We will spend 4 full days in this area, hopefully doing multiple excursions each day,
weather permitting. The way it should work is half the passengers
cruising in zodiacs for about 1 ½ hours and then after that doing a landing and spending 1 ½ to 2
hours walking around. The second half of
the passengers are doing the reverse, landing and then zodiac cruising. You can only have 100 people on land at a
time. If we have a really good day we'll do this process once in the morning and then again in the afternoon at a different location.
All of the old whaling sites on South Georgia have
been abandoned and are in disrepair. Two
of the sites have been cleaned up and you can visit them but the others can’t
be visited because of biohazards like asbestos and oil. Sir Ernest Shackleton is buried at one of the
sites, Grytviken, and we hope to be able to visit his gravesite and explore that old whaling station before leaving South Georgia. There are numerous penguin colonies on the islands and at the top of our list is St. Andrews Bay. As always, it’s about the weather and
consequently we don’t have a set itinerary. We'll see how this day unfolds.
(Randy) Well today
should be a pretty good day. We are
scheduled to hit Hercules Bay and Fortuna Bay for a combination of zodiacs
along the shore and walking on the land.
Hercules Bay was named after Hercules Bucht in the early 1900s by
Norwegian whalers after Hercules, a whaling vessel that once sought shelter in
the inlet in foul weather.
Well we were just advised that Hercules Bay is a no go. Once again, the seas are a little too
rough. We’re headed to Fortuna Bay of
which we know little about.
(Kathy) As Randy mentioned our first Zodiac excursion in Hercules Bay didn't happen. It was determined the winds
and sea conditions were too strong in that area. From our balcony, we could watch the Quark
assessment team take out several zodiacs to assess the situation. We watched them getting into and out of the
zodiacs from our balcony and the swells were causing the zodiacs to rise and
fall by at least 5 feet below and above the zodiac boarding platform. They had difficulty getting into the zodiacs. They were out there for an hour
though trying different things, so it was a good effort but as Randy said a no
go. Before every shore visit the assessment team also goes to shore to ensure
there is a safe landing spot with only smallish waves breaking on the beach. There are plenty of helping hands and a
technique to use to get off the zodiac into the breaking waves on the beach. They also assess the beach area for dead
animals. The bird flu has struck here
and if there are too many dead animals we won’t land. But at any rate, they didn’t go ashore for
this assessment since it was clear the passengers would have problems just
getting on the zodiac from the ship.
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| Lowering a Zodiac during sporty seas |
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| You can see how far into the water the platform is with the swell |
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| Now you see how far it's out of the water! |
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| And now it's just right . . . . for a moment or two! |
(Still Kathy) The team quickly decided to go to Stromness Bay and check out
the conditions there. Bingo! Conditions were much milder here and the sun was coming out - yay!. We got the okay to go for a zodiac
excursion, no landing though because the large whaling station here hasn't been cleaned up yet and still has many biohazards like asbestos and oil spills. Stromness is one of the oldest whaling stations in South Georgia and for those of you familiar with Ernest Shackleton and his epic story of rescuing his entire crew from the Endurance, this is where he and two of his men finally reached "civilization". You can read about that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance:_Shackleton%27s_Incredible_Voyage
We were pretty excited when we got the call to head to the ready room. The process consists of putting on several layers of clothes and socks,
grabbing your hat, gloves, and gear (camera, binoculars, etc.), which we already had piled up on the cabin sofa, and
heading to the ready room where the lockers are to put on our waterproof pants, muck boots, parka and flotation device. Since this was our first time everyone was pinging off of each other like a pinball machine but by the second or third time we were a well oiled machine. We went from about 15 minutes to get ready to 5 minutes. There were crew members just outside of the ready rooms checking you out to make sure everything was good - that decreased as we all get better too.
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| I don't think I am wearing my gator correctly . . . . |
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| Ready room lockers - we feel like firemen!!! |
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| Beanie penguin! |
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| We're actually sucking a lot less at selfies . . . well, IMHO!! |
(Randy) They send you down to the ready room in groups of about 45
each and those 45 are assigned to two separate ready rooms so there’s only about
20-25 people per room at a given time. Of
course, that’s just the theory, but it works out pretty well. We’re in the Penguin group and went out
second on the zodiacs. It rotates depending on your group. There are 4 groups: Albatross, Penguins, Seals and Whales. Glad we're not the whales - all the fat shaming!!
Considering it was our first time, I thought we all did well getting geared up and into the zodiacs.
Typically there are 10 passengers and 1 driver/guide on each Zodiac.
Clearly we are the most handsome couple!
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| Our first Zodiac "cruise". |
We spent about an hour and a half cruising
around the bay. One aspect of the Zodiac
portion is you get some great perspective shots of the landscape. The rugged beauty is pretty much everywhere
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| Zodiac staging to begin loading us up |
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| Kayaks staging also. |
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| And we're off - well actually that's not us but you get the idea! |
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| More great views! |
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| Cruising along the shore - nice back drop. |
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| Lots of kelp which means lots of wildlife - seals, penguins, seabirds, and hopefully whales! |
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| Beanie likes the pretty blue ones - icebergs that is. |
There is also an abandoned
whaling site where they processed the whales to make oil. We couldn’t go ashore there as it’s pretty
much a toxic wasteland of asbestos, industrial waste, and crashing
infrastructure.
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| Stromness Whaling Station - where Shackleton and two others reached "civilization". |
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| Little closer shot of the derelict buildings . . . and look closely - a seal! |
(Kathy) Though we couldn't land,
we got quite close to shore which was packed with fur seals, with a few
elephant seals as well, though it’s quite late in the breeding season for the
elephants. There were a few
penguins amongst the seals and we saw our first king penguin here. The seals were everywhere in the water
swimming all around us, some right next to the zodiac. One thing I wasn’t ready for was the noise of
hundreds of seals calling out to each other!
We actually heard this from the ship at the first bay we tried to visit
on zodiacs. There was like a background
hum that turned out to be the noise of hundreds, if not thousands, of
seals. I didn't take many photos this first time from the zodiac as I wasn't comfortable yet that if I wasn't holding on with both hands I wouldn't fall off!
Here's a couple of short videos from the zodiac cruise. Apologies for spanning so quickly, it was before we became "professionals"!
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| Probably this baby's first dip |
(Randy) We got back to the ship from our first zodiac excursion, had lunch and are ready for our first shore landing in Fortuna Bay. Everything is a go which means we will have a
split dispatch: half the passengers go to shore in zodiacs and spend a couple hours walking and the other half board their Zodiacs
and explore the bay. Then we switch.
We were first out for the shore visit
which was just what we wanted. We got suited up again and after another safety brief we’re at the shore fifteen minutes later. The advance crew has marked out trails for us to follow so we
don’t inadvertently end up in the middle of a fight between a couple of bull
elephant seals. We've all seen the National Geographic specials of David Attenborough walking amongst wildlife. Well this is just like that. Within five minutes of walking on shore we were beside 3 week old baby fur seals. There are large male fur seals still protecting their harems, adolescent males mock fighting and large elephant seals ruling their turf. There were literally thousands upon thousands
of king penguins all around us. The penguin chicks are quite large at this stage though still have their brown chick fuzz. Here's a couple of pictures of the baby seals. They'll be a ton more pictures later.
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| A seal pup nursery - still pretty fuzzy |
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| So how cute are these guy?! |
This is the point when female
penguins are starting to wean their pups.
They stay away at sea longer and longer until they reach the point where
they don’t return at all and the pup is on its own. The pups are roaming around the beach, trying
to mooch a little milk from any female around.
A few followed us with little puppy dog eyes. I just told them to get a job!
Another really interesting
feature is the noise! It is just
incredible! There are thousands of seals,
penguins, and sea birds all congregated in this one area and they are all
yelling out to the kids. We could hear
it when we entered the bay and it stayed with us throughout the expedition and
even back at the boat.
(Kathy) It was a wonderful first combination
zodiac and landing excursion. Fortuna
Bay has a lot of kelp and consequently a lot of seals. Walking among the seals and penguins was
incredible. Lots of noise and smells,
though the smell wasn’t as strong as I thought it would be. This is a bit late in the year for Elephant
seals but there were still a few of the big males on shore. They are incredible to see and hear – lots of
loud snorting and farting! The fur seals
are still plentiful and there were lots of bulls with their harems and quite a
few weaners, baby seals being weaned from mom.
The king penguins were in the thousands
- adults, fat fluffy adolescents who will soon molt and get their beautiful king penguin feathers, and adults going through their yearly molt. They can get quite cranky when they’re
molting and you have to be careful to keep your distance. The fluffy teenagers will also often try to
approach you hoping you are mom coming back from sea to feed them. Some curious or territorial seals will also approach you.
What an amazing first day on
the zodiacs and shore. Are you ready for a deluge of videos?
And now for a deluge of photos!
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| The trifecta - ship, penguins, and an iceberg! |
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| The second trifecta - ship, penguins, and seals! |
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| Count all the little white and brown dots - they're penguins. |
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| This year's chicks, they'll molt and get their beautiful feathers soon. Some bad hair days ahead! |
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| Speaking of bad hair days, adults molt too. This is a very bad hair day and she is very cranky. |
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| Before and after pic. |
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| Can someone say pedicure? |
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| Hey, he gave it a shot but I'm fresh out of krill vomit! Does this parka make me look fat? |
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| Couple of adolescent elephant seals having a discussion. |
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| Oh look Harriet, more of those large yellow things! |
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| Ryan, our Expedition Leader, directing traffic |
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| Ahh, lunch! Getting pretty big so this won't last much longer. |
(Randy . . again) Our walkabout lasted about an hour and a half and then we jumped back on the zodiacs to further explore the bay. The Zodiac drivers are all members of the Quark expedition team. For this excursion our zodiac driver was Marla, a biologist. It was sure nice to have your own specialist drive you around and give you professional narration along the way. We went from cove to cove for another hour and a half and by then the sun was behind the mountains, the evening chill was setting in, and I really needed a beer, so it was back to the boat.
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| Crew pulling the Zodiacs up into the ship hangar and power washing video below |
Because so much of the day's events ended up being on-the-fly and everything ran late, the dining room quickly moved to a buffet dinner with all the great food already planned. It’s this type of flexibility that has been the strength of this expedition. You never know what to expect until you are on location so the ability to adapt is critical. We whiffed on our first three options due to weather/safety concerns but ended up with home runs with the plan Bs. Good shit Maynard!
(Kathy) It's hard to put into words just how fantastic this day was or this trip for that matter.
Enjoying the blog! From the narratives to the video, nothing like the real thing. Definitely penguin paradise ! I wonder what the penguins think of the strange looking creatures taking their picture? 😊 Looking forward to the next installment.
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