(Today’s Chronicle can be found here.)
First sea day after a long stretch at South Georgia, and we are making the most of it – by making the least of it. Up at 9:30 am so that we are ready to receive room service at 10 am. (We moved the clocks ahead by an hour last night, so it’s not quite as lazy as it seems.)
I wish I could say that we’ve caught up on our sleep, but we’re back out on the open sea and the swells are building once more. We were pushing three-and-a-half metres for most of the night, and my suite’s bedside walls exhibits a nifty ‘feature’ in which it gives off a loud knocking noise amidst the swells. These elements combined are not conducive for a good night’s rest.
But at least we can take it easy today. We previously saw Kevin’s excellent presentation on eared seals, but I stop in for hotel director Csaba’s presentation on travel photography – he’s taken some beautiful pictures during his travels, and has even been asked to trial out new photography equipment on behalf of various companies.
Csaba explained that many people are willing to have their photo taken when asked, particularly if he shows them the picture when done (or shares it with them via e-mail). Sometimes they ask to take his picture in exchange. I’m reluctant to take people’s pictures in public, so this reassurance may help me make the leap.
Then off to trivia – my son correctly recalls that the symbol for Mercury is Hg, while I infer that all the number’s on the ‘devil’s game’ roulette add up to 666. This – combined with our team’s exceptional knowledge of Pink Floyd and collective flower nouns – earn us the win.
Nothing fancy for lunch today – just a quick hop into La Terrazza for the lunch buffet. After close to a month of rich lunches, we elect to just have simple sandwiches. It’s a welcome change, particularly given the sea conditions.
For the most part, however, we’re trying to keep ourselves from thinking of the sea – both the current conditions, and the upcoming conditions around Tristan da Cunha, Nightingale and Gough Islands. Windy is suggesting that we will narrowly miss a window of fair weather, with either high winds or high swells for our days in the area.
On one hand it’s hard to complain after our truly exceptional weather in South Georgia, but on the other hand we really want to land at Tristan da Cunha. But there’s nothing for us to do but sit and hope.
Well, we can also distract ourselves – with golf putting! My son helped put together this fiendishy difficult course:
Participants had to attempt either the toilet bowl or the yellow ramp before putting into either of the yellow holes. It was challenging, but good fun – and I managed to win this round.
Meanwhile, my wife and daughter were off at the art class where they were working on adding colour and shadow to my daughter’s existing piece. She’s deservedly quite proud of how it turned out:
We briefly attempt to walk around the walking track, but the swells are definitely not cooperating. So instead we take a bit of time for reading and blogging. I’m grateful for the chance to recover some of the videos from my GoPro, including my kayaking trip in Jason Harbour:
And some underwater videos of the fur seals in Godthul:
I’m quite amazed by how quickly they move underwater!
Off for the recaps, where Jamie informs us that the weather will be getting worse before it gets any better – we can expect swells in excess of four metres overnight.
I can’t say I’m looking forward to that, but I am profoundly grateful that our kids have their sea legs – though if anything can throw a wrench in the works, it’s tonight’s sea state.
On to the recaps. Greg introduces us to the crocodile icefish, which number in the millions and whose blood does not freeze due to the absence of hemoglobin:
Martin gives us an overview of penguin mating habits:
We then go off to dinner at La Terrazza with expedition leaders Marieka and Jamie. It’s fascinating hearing about all of their travels, particularly gorilla trekking in Uganda.
Marieka also once visited an orangutan sanctuary in Borneo where an adolescent orangutan jumped into Marieka’s arms and proceeded to drape its head with her blonde hair. Seems like the orangutan had a crush on her!
We ended the evening talking about how wonderful the trip has been, and how fortunate we’ve been to all be here together. Jamie said, “There’s no accident to any of this.”
I couldn’t have put it better.