There was a plan to get up at 4.30 for a pre-sunrise landing. It was a silly plan. Thankfully, the weather recognised this and saved us from our ill-conceived self-induced sleep-deprivation: 40-knot winds and 8ft waves don't make for safe beach landings, so the alarm call was delayed until a comparatively civilised 8.00 for breakfast.
The weather in South Georgia changes as quickly as a prop forward when the bar's open: by the time we pootled off down the coast in a Zodiac it was calm with occasional hail; landing at Gold Harbour 30 minutes later it was breezy and cloudy with light snow. After 15 minutes the wind and snow stopped and the sun came out, albeit briefly. Just like Trent Bridge in April.
Cute? I'll tell you what's cute: baby elephant seals. OK, they weigh several hundred kilograms, but they're still cute.
And Oakum Boys are jolly cute too. Who? Well, apparently, many of the chaps who came down here on the early sealing ships had spent time at the pleasure of whichever majesty was around at the time, and had been compelled to wear brown hairy prison garb made of waste fabric and cork shavings: this substance had a name which in its original Old English, Norse or (for all I know) Zulu sounded like "Oakum". On first spotting king penguin chicks, which are the VERY cute brown hairy ones, the aforementioned sealers saw a resemblance, and named them Oakum Boys. Naturalists (being the jovial souls that they are) maintain the tradition.
This afternoon we moved on to St Andrews Bay, and what I can only describe as "that's enough penguins." About a quarter of a million king penguins, in fact; along with vast numbers of elephant seals, fur seals, giant petrels and astonished tourists. At any one time there were about 50 of us ashore, giving us roughly 5000 penguins each. The brown fluffy ones are chicks about 8 months old; they waddle about looking confused, and occasionally one will throw a wobbly and run around in circles squeaking and flapping its flippers. As a tour manager, of course, I'm familiar with this kind of behaviour...
