Christmas in South Georgia!

Talk about a unique Christmas! We woke up early and took a zodiac ride to a place called St. Andrews Bay, where literally tens of thousands of penguins live and nest at the base of glacier and mountains. This is where the largest King penguin colony in the world lives- as you can see in the pictures there are just penguins and penguins and more penguins (estimated to be half a million penguins!!!). While Scott spent most of the time trying to get a picture of each and every penguin, I spent my time sitting on rocks and hoping that the penguin chicks (brown fur coats) would come up and sit with me. The thing about the chicks is that they are incredibly curious and if you get down to their level they are known to come right up to you. We had penguins come within an arms length away… it was unreal!












That afternoon we sailed to Grytviken, an old whaling station, which is also the home of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s grave. We were given the opportunity to toast “The Boss” and hike around the island for a few hours. Needless to say, Scott and I were the first to the top of the peak and extended the “leg stretch” to a nice 2 hour hike. We needed the exercise after all the food and wine they serve on this boat!







We spent Christmas evening docked in the bay here and enjoyed a wonderful turkey dinner and Christmas carols sung to us by the entire staff…. Hilarious!!! I think the best part though is that Scott may have “borrowed” a Christmas tree from the bar near our room so that we could have a Christmas tree in our room. Its doesn’t have the same smell as a real tree, but we love it ☺



The next morning we sailed into Gold Harbor and got into our zodiac at 4am in an attempt to see the sun rise and watch the animals wake up. When we got to the beach we were welcomed by an ADORABLE baby elephant seal and a beautiful snow shower. Apparently when baby seals are “teenagers” their moms leave them to go to sea to get food and in the meantime they scour the beach for anything that may be able to feed them. The seal tried to suck on both of our boots and hands… and then snorted on my glove. Hilarious and gross at the same time. Would I let it do it again? Hells ya.



Gold Beach is known for, you guessed it, seals and penguins! This time we were faced with mostly elephant seals or land slugs and Gentoo penguins. The elephant seals are FAT and mostly just make burping and farting noises. Sounds a lot like our apartment… just kidding!







As the snow came down, we spent some time with the Gentoo penguins at the end of our trip. They are much more calm and quiet than the King penguins. They have these beautiful red beaks and look much more cuddly. Def my favs so far!



We were back on the boat by 6am and as we cruised into the Scotia Sea we were greeted by 70mph winds and 18+ ft waves. They have general ratings on the boat to measure the sea conditions… going from 0 being flat seas and 12 being a hurricane, the conditions were given a 9 ½ yesterday. It felt like being on a rollercoaster. They sealed off the doors and windows for the first 4 floors and told us to hold on. Amazingly none of us got seasick --- lets see how that compares to Drake Passage!!!

The next 2 days will be spent sailing the Scotia Sea until we get to Antarctica on December 29th. We will spend 4 days there and then will head back toward Ushuaia….We cant wait to explore the land of ice! Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!!!