Monday 27 February 2012 - Cuverville Island and Port Lockroy

Our days are busy again with a full program to look forward too.  A full day today starting with a landing on Cuverville Island which is covered in snow and home to large Gentoo penguin colonies.  The Penguin smell is very strong and if the wind is blowing in the right direction you can smell it on the ship and if you get their droppings on your clothing it will stay in them for months.  I walked with Malcolm and two or three others up the steep slope on slippery ice to a high vantage point to get a great view of the beach and ship below, keeping our heads down as the occasional territorial Skuas sweep down at us.  Not many people walked up the mountain, preferring to stay on the beach closer to the penguin colonies and lazy seals basking on the beach.  Because the Antarctic Treaty does not allow for more then 100 people on land at any one time, we returned to the ship for lunch as boats with more visitors came ashore.  I understand that there are about 230 tourists on this trip and each boat takes 9 passengers plus one crew member so you can imagine the ongoing traffic of people coming to land and the empty boat picking up those who are returning to the ship.  After lunch we prepared for our next landing at 14:30 at Port Lockroy an English manned tiny island of rock with a small shop and Post Office from where I was able to send 14 cards which were duly stamped and returned in a mail bag to the ship to be landed at Port Stanley in the Falklands and then send to the United Kingdom for on-forwarding to their final destinations. The island is not much bigger then a football field and is manned for the summer months by five or six people and hundreds Gentoo penguins with the seals waiting for a quick feed of the unwary Gentoo in the water.  The Gentoo are are so unconcerned by people that they will walk right up to you with no fear at all.  Some will stand next to your boot and have a peck at it to see if it's edible.  This is a photographers delight although after taking hundreds of photos how many more do you need?  Tonight we were told that the ship would have to change it's schedule because we had to sail for the Chilean antarctic base on King George island to land Lyn an Aussie medical evacuee and friend who had a suspected stroke.  The good weather continues to hold and we will be steaming all night to arrive early tomorrow at our destination. It's been a busy day and with all the fresh air and being at sea I was pretty tired and asleep at 21:00