Seriously. How much larger do the elephant seals get as adults? They look positively huge compared to the fur seal.

Like humans, they do get kind of scraggly before emerging to their adult selves, no?

Thanks for the explanations!

Oh, they have been so lucky so far, a few little bumps won't bother them. I don't know a one aboard who is a wimp like me. When I saw barf bags placed between the rails and the walls on Explorer II, I figured we were in for some action, and it turned me green.

Wow is all i can say......thanks all for such a wonderful story with pictures of an amazing trip.....yes, big on my bucket list...

At 6 they get these really ugly big noses that look really grotesque. They move like slugs and look like snakes. They double in size. Don't think they get adolescent looking like the penguins. The males grow to 16 ft and 8000 pounds versus a fur seal which is about 350 pounds and 6 feet. They weigh more than two rhinos.

Those adult elephant seals are surely gross. When I went, a bunch of them went up and down like in a pinball game. Too gross to be funny

Your pictures are beyond words they are so fantastic! How wonderful that you are having such magnificent weather!

Fantastic pictures everyone. LOVE them.

Posting for Ralph:

Wow - that flying penquin picture is way cool.

Loving all these pics!

Glad to see you made it back safe and sound Rachel. This thread will certainly keep you from cruise withdrawal for a bit longer...

This has been a wonderful trip to follow - just wish I could have joined you. The photos and commentary have been fabulous - well done to all who contributed. Keep up the good work. Lee

South Georgia

Today has been the first of two sea days. The seas have been rough for 24 hours now. We are on our way to Elephant Island and tonight a few of the waves in the dining room were like those in "A Perfect Storm." We knew that there would be payoff for the magnificent weather and bathtub like water we had since leaving Ushuaia. We have had beautiful sea days, 2 great days in the Falklands and three lovely days in South Georgia and our team said rarely have they experienced weather as good as ours. We had tons of layers packed of long underwear - heavy weight, mid weight and light weight and enough toe and foot warmers to last us an entire winter. I just used one pack yesterday for our zodiac ride, but probably didn't need them.

I really didn't know much about this part of the world and that was part of the attraction. However, having read the trip reports on LCT and reading others' remarks that it was the trip of a lifetime, it whetted our desire to add it to our bucket list. Ngaire had said that we mustn't take this trip without ensuring that South Georgia was part of our itinerary. I really never understood why but went along with her recommendation. Most trips to Antarctica do not include South Georgia and this is truly a special and historic place.

For those of you who may not remember here is a brief recap of the Antarctic story. The explorer, Shackleton, set sail from England to Antarctica, but his ship, the Endurance, was grounded on an ice flow in the southern seas where we now are. He and his men set up a camp on an ice flow drifting 600 miles towards Antarctica and eventually set sail in small life boats in wet clothes that had turned to icy armor. They were confined to the boats day and night in -22 degree weather. Sadly, they found the current had carried them back 50 miles. Their only hope was to go to Elephant Island. It is such a harsh environment, our crew has told us that no zodiac has been able to to go ashore for the past 10 years (!). So, it was remarkable that they made it alive. They did and set up camp there.

But, there was no chance of rescue. Shackleton, set out again for rescue for his men. He set off for South Georgia. He was doing our trip in reverse and would visit the whaling stations we had just visited in order to get help. The rest is history. He climbed the Alps of the south without any proper equipment ...over 30 miles...without maps and just equipped with a compass...he climbed the totally unchartered interior 2000 foot mountains and was able to secure the help and rescue all of his 27 men.

Our trip retraces somewhat the 1916 journey of these amazing explorers. Of course we do this in the summer, in a lovely, modern cruise ship, with modern navigational equipment. When we hit some swells last night, folks excused themselves from dinner early and went to their rooms. Some activities today were cancelled because of rough seas. Our skies today, despite the swells, are blue. How did Shackleton manage to navigate a small wooden lifeboat in hurricane force winds? This trip is helping us relive the epic story of the human spirit. Shackleton was a consummate leader who ensured that not a single life was lost.

We haven't yet been to Elephant Island, but folks who have, kept saying, enjoy the green in South Georgia because you won't see it once you leave. All I see now is blue seas and white caps. South Georgia was discovered in the late 1600s and by the early 1900s had become the whaling capital of the world. It remained a whaling harbor until 1965. Once having a population of 15000 to 20000 in it's heyday. It was comprised of men and only 3 wives; our questions about needing women were artfully dodged by the crew. In 1982, the Falkland war came to the island with the Argentinean invasion and the British military garrison remained until 2001. It now has a permanent population of 12.

Our first day we had three landings, with fur seals, king penguins, and reindeer. Of course we overdressed. I expected it to be really cold, but the weather was in the high 40s. Our first stop was incredible as we walked among 250,000 king penguins of all sizes and shapes. No wide angle camera lens really captures how vast the rockery is. We found the big brown balls of fluff adorable. They followed their moms around pecking submissively underneath mom's bill for food. Sometimes mom would ignore them, sometimes put up with the pecking. What was interesting was they all seemed to feed at the same time, together. Then, there were the sad sacks. The teenagers. They were molting and rather odd looking. Some had lot all their fluff and were only left with a Mohawk hairdo; others a Beatle hairdo. Some were left with a pony fur look, or others a shawl. They were also the mischievous ones, the fellows who would pull at your coat or backpack or talk back to mom or walk all hunched over like all the weight of the world was on their shoulders. As their fluff dropped and they came into full adulthood, the yellow on their beaks, head and chest became a rich orange gold. They would strut through the crowd chest out, neck stretched high above the rest to show off. They slept three ways: lying down on their bellies, standing tall but balanced on their heels, or standing with their necks totally twisted and tucked backwards under their wings so they looked headless. In the water, they dove in and then popped up, floating, and looked, to our surprise, like ducks. Then there were the groups who would walk along hitting one another with their flippers.

Our next stop introduced us to the wild world of fur seals. Remember the whack a mole penguins? Well we had whack a mole seals. First, we had a welcoming committee of seals. They saw our zodiac and came en mass to say hello. These are not shy animals. They are curious about everything. Some have little ferret faces, some puppy faces, some kitty faces, some to rodent faces...some lemur faces..the little ones are dark brown or black. The adult ones are blonde, a mix or brown. The pups make lamb noises. The older ones bark. They love to run up to you and you clap and say no. They run back and try again. It's a game. They must be very bored. After a which, it gets old. You just say: "bad seal." They are very active- constantly playing. In the water, with one another. They are so much fun to watch. We climbed up this boardwalk on our second excursion and they would see us coming and hide in the grass and jump out at us, barking, we would clapbat them and the game would begin! And they were everywhere. The team had to shoo them off for us. At our last stop on the second day, they were very aggressive. It was a large field, and they would intermingle with the reindeer and the king penguins and put on quite a show. At one stop, however, on our second day, they were sweet and docile, and there was no wild charging. They had very different personalities.

As sweet as the fur seal is, the elephant seal is disgusting. Doug thinks they are rather nice and keeps showing me cute pictures of them. However, this is the man who also posts pictures of me that he thinks are good and I think are awful. The elephant seal is really a strange animal. To me, it looks like a giant slug. The 2-3 month old babies were only 2 tons and full grown elephant seals grow to 4 tons. While young, they have sweet cat like faces, which, unfortunately, as they mature, develop grotesque large noses. They slither along the ground like snails and we had roadblocks due to elephant seal crossing. They are nasty creatures, fast in land and in the sea, traveling many miles quickly. You can't clap you hands and say " no" to them. I don't know if anyone will post a picture but their very large nostrils always have white mucous coming out of them...another endearing feature. This is caused by a teeny spider that lives deep in the seals' respiratory system and causes it irritation. The seal sneezes, forcing the spider out. Since the seal is often in close contact with other seals, it is easily passed. Do I see a clinical opportunity here?

Back to people.... Some folks decided to take part of the Shackleton trek over the mountains, while others opted for a flatter walk. The Shackleton walk wasn't the full walk, but about a tenth of the actual walk...the last bit to the whaling station in Grytviken. Doug and i opted for the flat walk, Doug walking farther than I, and we still felt this later. The landscape was reminiscent of the west of the US with the addition of a glacier or two.

We had the opportunity for some retail therapy in the town of Grytviken. There is a post office, a gallery, an outdoor museum and an indoor museum. The outdoor museum housed Shackleton's cemetery plot (his wife said to keep his body in the place he loved the most instead of returning it to England. no one said whether she came to the funeral, but he did have a mistress and was a lousy husband who was never home, so I'm guessing she probably didn't want him back), a self guided tour of the whaling factory, the church; the indoor museums contained a mixture of artifacts from the whaling period as well as replicas of the lifeboats Shackleton traveled in. The museum had the usual stuff.

That night, we had a presentation from the Heritage trust in Dundee which is a Habitat restoration project which is a project to rid South Georgia of the Norwegian brown rat which arrived with sealers and whalers and has thrived and eats birds' eggs and baby birds. It focuses on birds on the ground and underground, primarily the pipit, but where eradicated, even albatross populations have improved. Pellets are used which the rats love, but sadly secondary mortality does occur. Phase one is complete but they still need to complete phase two which holds some urgency. They are trying to prevent the rats ( which to date do not appear to have DNA relationships) from crossing the glaciers. These glaciers are receding 1 meter per day and the rats could then either swim or find dry land. With success, there could be 10 million more birds in 5 years; in three years there should be breeding pipits.

Our final day included the lovely Gold Harbor and a wonderful zodiac ride in and out of coves where we had a different vantage point of South Georgia, the animals and the scenery. We saw a glacier carve twice and our first iceberg in a distance in South Georgia.

As we left South Georgia, we had traveled 740 nautical miles from Ushuaia and had 736 nautical miles to go to Elephant Island.

This is a picture of two of our favorite people on the ship, Terrific Tina and Nice Nina the receptionists extraordinaire. They are always happy with big smiles and nothing is too much trouble. I wish we could take them to all our future cruises with us. If we could combine Carmen from Regent and these two ladies it would be total perfection.

Our whole group feels the same way about these two ladies it is often the talk at the card tables.



Had a rough day at sea yesterday but this should give us fine weather in Antarctica. For the first time I can remember I missed dinner, I am not sure if it was sea sickness or my onion allergy but either way it was not good. Of course it would be Rack of Lamb night and we ordered in our room and I did eat some lamb but sure wish it had been a different night. Fortunately I had a rack of lamb lunch earlier in the trip.

Today is it much calmer and the sun is peaking through. Hopefully by tomorrow morning it will be calm for our visit to the Elephant Island and the “Ice Garden” zodiac ride that is in the same spot.

Off to play hearts before we have to do our Bio Security Check to be sure we are not carrying any critters or seeds from South Georgia to Antarctica.

The pictures get more phenominal as you go. thanks everyone. Love the history lesson, Andi, and all the commentary.
Can't wait for the next installment!
Lynn

Ah, Elephant Island!! We enjoyed it on our first trip down there, but not so much the second time on the Mariner. On our Circle South America trip, we were supposed to spend three days around the Antarctica peninsula, but because of bad weather, we spent the whole time circleing Elephant Island. Fortunatly there were a few icebergs floating around to look at --Elephant Island got old after a while. I love the story about Shakleton--we took pretty much the same route you are when we were on the Hanseatic.

We are on day two of our trip to Elephant Island and have awoken to calmer seas than we went to bed to lady night. More folks have ventured out of their cabins and the dining Rooney, public areas and lecture room were full once again. Folks are looking less green and are laughing and playing cards.

Last night we had a lovely dinner with the folks across the hall. One of the blessings and curses with traveling with friends is that you tend to remain fairly insular and take your tours and eat with your existing friends. If we had been this insular 10 years ago, none of our travel friends

I failed to mention in my last post that we added two new types of penguins to collection. As we neared our last stop, Cooper Bay, there was a great deal of activity outside. Seals were playing around and something wad busy porpoising in the water all over the place, like flying fish. We soon found out that these were the chinstrap penguins. They get this name from the thin line of black feathers that runs like a strap
under their white chins. They look like they are wearing a little helmut on a white face with a black beak. They are about the same size as gentoos and I had a hard time at first distinguishing them quickly from one another. Both have orange feet (the only color on the chinstrap) but the gentoo has the slash of orange lipstick nod a totally black head, save for white eyebrows. The warming of the Antarctic Peninsula has seemed to favor chinstraps and they have become the locally dominant penguin species. We also finally saw the
macaroni penguin, who look a lot like the rockhopper penguin. Their tufts of hair are a bright gold and begin at the bridge of their beaks and are slicked back like a headdress. These penguins are the most numerous penguins in the world but only a small amount breed in Antarctica. Most of their
nests are scattered among chinstrap penguins. The name macaroni comes from the English slang term for a man who dressed in gaudy attire popular in Italy. Breeding is interesting with this penguin. Macaronis lay 2 eggs. Incubation doesn't begin until the second egg has bern laid, by which time the first egg is dead or at least very cold. The
first egg then never hatches and this has puzzled biologists.

There is the Bergmann's Rule of adaptation that scientists have found applies to life in Antarctica. It appears that the closer one gets to the poles, the larger the animal becomes. Emperor penguins are found the furthest south and the smallest penguins are closest to the equator. This has to do with the amount of body mass an animal needs to keep itself
alive. Even insects found in the Baltic region are massive in size compared with those found in the Antarctic.

Fish also adapt. They are invisible as they don't develop blood vessels. Seals and whales must also exist in a realm of intense cold, no light and crushing pressure when they fish.special physiology is required to function without
breathing and they must store oxygen and use it more conservatively than we do. seals do not hold their Bragg when they dive but their oxygen is so red in their blood and muscles. The volume of blood is greater in a seal to body size than that of a human. In addition, their blood can hold up to 3 times motes more oxygen.

Our expedition team has members who have become so immersed in life in Antarctica, that they even ice dive. They wear fur underwear and wet suits and examine life under the ice. They said even with these precautions, one's mouths
become frozen and it is impossible to protect one's extremities from the chill.

The entire team on Silverseas works very hard for us-- each and every staff member. The expedition tean not only present wonderful lectures, accompany every expedition, drive our zodiacs, but zip our coats, run down the halls to find you if you have lost a hat or glove. The front desk staff only wants to make things easier. I forgot my I.D. Card. I mentioned it to Doug while standing in line waiting to get in the zodiac. Nina said "please don't bother. You will get overheated running to your room. I will print you a new one right now." Everything on this ship runs smoothly and with a smile. I already have an open booking to return. I am happy with the ship, the staff, my room, the food, the itinerary. This is a class act.

love all this seamail...speaking of green...I am so green with envy every day when I read all these postings and see the fabulous photos! Thank you all for making the effort to share with us. I LOVE reading these each days.

Big thank you to Karen too for taking her time to upload so many of the photos for Andi.

Reading these posts has been such a treat! Thank you all so much...loving every minute of reading about your trip and the photos have been wonderful!

Loved the comment about the teenager penguins. They seem very similar to human teenagers.

Today was another amazing day on the Silver Explorer. We were able to take the zodiacs over and land on Elephant Island!!! What an unbelievable experience this trip has been. Just a few of my favorite shots.

Iceberg



Chinstrap Away



Porpoising (a little blurry - so hard to capture)



Fighting



Mom and chick



Post feeding



Ngaire, Arlene, Andrea enjoying Elephant Island

This was the first landing on Elephant island for our ship in ten years! Ii understand the statistics are something in the neighborhood of 30000 touists and 175 actually set foot on this island per annum. Maybe we should all buy lottery tickets? Perhaps this is our win! The skies were a crisp blue and the temps were 32 degrees. We were warned that the team would try and they were hopeful, but they had bend hopeful before. If we heard we were to wear boots for a wet landing it would mean that they would try. Well, we were the second zodiac group, so things could get worse for us after 90 minutes. doug and I looked out our window at where Shackleton landed and saw no one landing, so we had our hopes dampened. What we didn't know was that the landing was on the other side.

Folks came in from the first zodiac all smiles and said this wasn't one to be missed. We not only landed, but we saw a glacier calving, an iceberg splitting, chinstraps jumping up icebergs, and two humpback whales. What a day! Now we are off for Antarctica.

Posting for Andi:

Wow, wow, wow!!! Beth - am so pleased Crystal is having so much fun with you all. Lee

More wonderful photos. Thanks you all!

Crystal stayed on board yesterday and had a wonderful time with some resident penguins. She invited Beth to join later.

This is a chinstrap on Elephant island where Shackleton landed. We were so lucky to have beenable to land here. This is the width of the area the 27 men stayed. The pink coloration is the poop.

The penguins were jumping out of the sea onto the ice. Sometimes the made it and sometimes they didn't.

These two icebergs were one when we started out. It broke in half while watched it and turned. Only 1/3 of the iceberg is visible. The rest is below water.

Crystal stayed on board yesterday and had a wonderful time with some resident penguins. She invited Beth to join later.

This is a chinstrap on Elephant island where Shackleton landed. We were so lucky to have beenable to land here. This is the width of the area the 27 men stayed. The pink coloration is the poop.

The penguins were jumping out of the sea onto the ice. Sometimes the made it and sometimes they didn't.

These two icebergs were one when we started out. It broke in half while watched it and turned. Only 1/3 of the iceberg is visible. The rest is below water.

Good morning, all, from Brown Bluff, Antarctica. Today we walk on the continent. Many of us were up at 3:30am to watch the glorious sunrise with its magnificent colors. This continues to be the most amazing trip I've ever taken!!!

Mission accopmlished. Continent 7 is now mine. And it was warm. Talk about peeling off the layers. Gloves, hats, long underwear etc not needed. (No, I didn't peel long underwear until I returned to the ship). Another dream come true.

WOW !!! So exciting for all of you!

Posting for Ralph:

Posting for Andi:

Those photos above are from Antarctica! The friendly little penguins are gentoo chicks. The mom feeding the chick is a new one for us, an adelie. I had this gentoo chick in my lap for about a half an hour. They are warm and soft. I think he thought I was mom. The Adelies are like lemmings and aren't terribly bright. They do everything en mass. But, we all have our favorites. Yes, that's pink poop on the chick.

Photos From Elephant Island & Brown Bluff:

Everyone looks so happy in all the pics. I'm loving reading the reports and seeing the fabulous photos. What a journey!

to have a chick in your lap. and then champagne in a hot tub!

is the person in the group shot with the clava in witness protection or just colder than the rest of the group?

the hot tub in Antarctica shot is priceless.

we usually take a "big" trip every 5 yrs for my and spouse's 1/2 decade birthdays; you've shot this destination to the TOP of my list.

thanks for bringing us along - whether we're "flat" or not...

LOL, I thought the same thing! For sure, I am seeing new faces who need to join us on lct and that one puzzled me!

ededmd, what a destination, but honestly, they have had the best weather and seas that I've seen from Ngaire's 3 escorted cruises here (one of which I was on) Have to say, it deserves top billing (well, maybe Africa if I'd not been there)

This trip just gets better and better! So thankful the seas are calm and the weather is nice!