From One End To The Other

Leaving the small Russian trawler behind, we race on fast Zodiac boats towards a long stretch of shore on South Georgia. I was aching to get to the Antarctic Peninsula after a week at sea. Eighteen years old and impatient. Little did I know that this small island was about to shock my senses.

We stagger onto the pebbled beach looking like drunks as we attempt to recover our equilibrium. Heads bobble around, trying to take in the sheer amount of animal movement surrounding our small group.
The expedition leader tells us to avoid the fur seals at all costs, due to their bite, which carries bacteria deadly to humans. The thing is, they are everywhere – I get chased down the beach by these adorable yet vicious baby seals and their larger parents – They are quick, and bark like dogs.
Meanwhile, the penguins really couldn’t give a damn about you. I sit with some of these chilled out birds once I escape the pack of rabid seals, and I watch as the middle-aged tourists become children. “Oooh” and “ahh” and of course they try to pet the penguins although it is forbidden. Dreams are coming true at this moment.

It is sensory overload; the air cold (duh), and smelly with a combination of animal filth and dead seaweed. The Atlantic Ocean is grating the stones on the shore, and the seals and penguins are dancing in the small waves. I say dancing, because I didn’t see anyone catch dinner.
I walk a few hundred yards along the foreshore and find elephant seals camped out beneath a rocky cliff. A fresh gust of wind wraps their stench around my head. These hefty, grunting, slobbering beasts are the source of the smell permeating over the beach.

Previous to this day I had genuinely believed that David Attenborough and all his pals had to trek over silent landscapes for days to find colonies of creatures such as this. It was the first time I had seen the animals from the documentaries I love, and I never thought it would be like this. A smorgasbord of wildlife.
Don’t get me wrong, on the peninsular it could get so quiet and so still that you would think the place is completely barren – only abandoned whale bones to look at – until you hear the splash of a fin, or spot a lone Gentoo heading back to his nest. You are never quite alone, on the loneliest place on earth.