Another epic day! We left Potter’s Cove and did a 7 hour sail to Yankee Harbour at Greenwich Island. A long sail through snow and rain, with much yappy chatter around the saloon table. We’re rapidly bonding into a big happy family . One humpback whale made a flowing but brief appearance along the way.
Yankee Harbour, wow… as Heike said, “It’s as close to heaven as you can safely go!” – a protected harbor surrounded by snowy ice-cliffs, with a rocky promontory with LOTS of Gentoo penguins. The first thing you notice is the smell.
And the smell got more intense when we got off the zodiac, near some fat roly-poly elephant seals that vocalise in a farty groaney way. The Gentoos are charming, busy birds – always industriously warming their young, walking on penguin highways to reach the water to hunt fish, or stealing stones from each other’s nests. A few chinstrap penguins lurked between the rocks.
Penguins are remarkably relaxed about having people hang around them and stare while cooing. This we did a lot of, with our coos rising in pitch and volume when young emerged off their parent’s warm feet. Penguins bustled surprisingly fast along the rocky ground with their flippers stretched backwards (which is apparently done for cooling their armpits!). Their grace is apparent in the water – they porpoise with enthusiasm toward the shore. Bertrand can testify that trying to catch such a porpoise on camera involves many shots of blank water, while Katherine is still confused as to why penguins porpoise and porpoises don’t penguin.
We finally had dinner at about 9.30pm – these long Antarctic days are great for packing a lot in. A good deal of delicious shepherd’s pie was consumed (Adam said it was second only to his mother’s – a real stamp of approval). A gang of contented elephant seals fell into bed (there was perhaps some farting and groaning.)
