Stromness - Wednesday 3 January - am

The view of Stromness from my picture window. 

On Wednesday morning, we went to Stromness and shared the landing with lots of seals. Three areas were marked off for us to view; the old whaling station buildings, seal pups playing in the sea pools, and a short trek retracing the end of Shackleton‘s epic journey.

I wasn’t entirely at ease during this landing. there were several cranky adult seals about and our walking area  was shared with many seals. I constantly felt that one of the inquisitive seal pups would get under foot, or I might incur the wrath of an adult seal.

We have been warned if a large seal becomes agitated and approaches us, we are not to run. Instead, we are advised to stand our ground, arms out, make ourselves as big and tall as possible, and clap hands at the seal, if necessary.

In practice, what I do is just to stay very close to guide Leo. Leo has Wintered over in Antarctica several times and has 18 years experience of guiding in this region, and is the undisputed seal whisperer. 

I think this little one looked like Hairy McClary  

 What big whiskers you have, Grandma. 

Pups playing in the pools

Stunning scenery as usual

Seal yoga

In this area seals are more affected by the avian flu and there were a few carcasses at the landing. We did wonder if it was intrusive for us to be visiting although we know that the South Georgian government is very strict with bio security protocols, and in fact, we had an officer board and inspect all of the passenger gear before we were cleared to land. 

On one of the at-sea days on the way to South Georgia we had all individually scrubbed our muck boots and teased out any small stones or seeds in the crevices of the boots with paper clips.. All Velcro tabs on our gear were checked for errant fibres and pants and backpacks vacuumed, so we did feel we were doing everything possible to not bring any issues to the area.

Muckboot cleaning

I will finish with a view of some morning icebergs on the way to Stromness