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World View

11/9/2021

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5 Things You Didn't Know: Greenland

The world's largest island is home to the world's largest national park and the world's fastest flowing glacier. Here are more incredible facts that might surprise you.

Daily Expedition Reports

Follow Along

Daily Expedition Reports

11/29/2021

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National Geographic Endurance

St. Andrew’s Bay and Grytviken, South Georgia Island

The early bird gets the worm; today, the worm was one million king penguins! Starting our morning at St. Andrew’s Bay, we wandered among fur and elephant seals to get a fantastic view of the largest colony of king penguins on South Georgia. With over 250,000 breeding pairs, plus the rambunctious “oaken boys” that have not yet molted their baby down feathers in exchange for their adult waterproof coat, an easy conservative estimate of the colony’s population is around 800,000 to 1,000,000 individual penguins. An incredible sight, sound, and smell to behold – we took several minutes just to try to take it all in.   With katabatic winds building down the Heeney glacier, we headed back to the ship for lunch and transportation to our afternoon at Grytviken whaling station. Naturalist Carl Erik led us in a toast to the Boss at Shackleton’s gravesite, and we explored the ruins of the whale processing plant. South Georgia Heritage Trust runs a museum with artifacts from all of the different eras of the island’s history, and the post office was open for some to send postcards back home!

Daily Expedition Reports

11/28/2021

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National Geographic Endurance

Gold Harbor; Cooper Bay, South Georgia

Carly Simon's 1971 song “Anticipation” came to mind as we left the South Orkney Islands and traveled for a day and a half toward the second phase of this journey in the Southern Ocean. What would we find on this far off mountainous island called South Georgia? What would the weather be like? Would the stories of high winds, rough seas, and difficult to approach beaches restrict the locations we could access and hamper our hoped-for activities?   Early this morning the rugged coastline of the eastern end of South Georgia was visible below the low clouds shrouding much of the higher peaks. The plan was to arrive at a large open bay called St. Andrews soon after the sun rose. An early breakfast would allow us to get ashore for a longer period. Besides the overcast skies, the weather was not a problem, especially because the sea conditions were near perfect with only a light wind. So, people trickled to Base Camp after finishing breakfast and were transferred to the beach.   Excitement was somewhat overwhelming as guests stepped foot onto South Georgia for the first time. Elephant seals lay on the beach like snoozing giant slugs. Scattered amongst them were Antarctic fur seals varying in size since males are much larger than females. Naturalist staff onshore led small groups down the beach to an area where the main group of king penguin chicks were nesting. What a morning!!   Then enroute to our afternoon destination, the Bridge officers spotted whales spouting in the distance. We then slowly approached the area and some 10-12 humpback whales seemed to be feeding. Groups of 2 and 3 whales surfaced in close repetition at various distances from the ship. In conjunction with the whales, there were large numbers of prion seabirds also feeding but at the surface. All around the ship there was activity - a very unexpected event enroute to the afternoon location.   At Cooper Bay, the ship anchored out of the wind blowing around the eastern end of the main island so we could get out in boats for a cruise along the shoreline. At one small channel along the rocky coast, there was a landing place for macaroni penguins to land on a beach and then make their way up a steep cliff to their nesting colony. All along the shore we could see jousting fur seals and resting elephant seals. Gentoo and king penguins were also coming and going. The wildlife was activity was endless.   But the day was not finished and after dinner we cruised to the end of Drygalski Fjord to view a tidewater glacier as well as the steep rock cliffs which lined the entire shores of the fjord. This was quite the finale satisfying the heightened anticipation of our first experiences at South Georgia. There certainly was more to come.

Daily Expedition Reports

11/28/2021

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National Geographic Endeavour II

Espanola Island

Today National Geographic Endeavour II is visiting Espanola Island. Here in this beautiful place we have plenty of activities to do. We started the day with deep water snorkeling on Gardner Islet before heading to Gardner Beach, which is one of the most beautiful beaches in the entire archipelago.   After a delicious lunch, naturalist Socrates Tomalá was in the lounge for a photo talk where we learned how to take the best photographs during our hikes here in the Galapagos. Later we hiked on Punta Suarez, an amazing place to photograph sea birds, including the waved albatross and Nazca booby.   After a shower back onboard, it was time to head to the lounge for naturalist Javier Carrion’s interesting presentation about adaptive radiation. Then, our expedition leader Juan Carlos gave us information about tomorrow’s activities. We cannot wait to keep exploring this amazing place.

Daily Expedition Reports

11/27/2021

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National Geographic Resolution

Coronation Island, South Orkney Islands

As the National Geographic Resolution crosses the Scotia Sea, conditions have been much calmer than the Drake allowing us time to explore the South Orkney Islands. After lunch we made a landing on Coronation Island and had our first look at the charismatic chinstrap penguins and a little dose of South Georgia with both fur and elephant seals on the beach. What an incredible spot! A tidewater glacier in the background and the call of the chinstrap made for quite a dramatic and vocal scene!   The South Orkney islands were discovered in 1821 by two sealers: Nathaniel Palmer from Connecticut and George Powell from the UK. Seals were eliminated from the South Shetland Islands within three years of their 1819 discovery, and these two sealers went out searching for new sealing grounds from Elephant Island. While they did not find a bounty of fur and blubber, they did add to the map of the Southern Ocean. Powell named Coronation Island to celebrate the crowning of George IV who had become King of Great Britain in 1820. Nearby Monroe Island was named for Palmer’s sloop James Monroe .   On nearby Laurie Island, a famous Scottish Expedition under the leadership of William Spiers Bruce spent the winter of 1902 on their ship the Scotia (from which the Scotia Sea is named after). The small weather station built, by the Scottish Antarctic Expedition, was taken over (by mutual agreement) by the Argentine government in 1905 and renamed Orcadas. Of the 67 stations around Antarctica, it is the longest running scientific station today.   Visiting the South Orkney Islands has been an amazing bonus to an already extraordinary trip.

Daily Expedition Reports

11/27/2021

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National Geographic Islander

Bartolome and Santa Cruz Islands

Today we had a very early wakeup call to start our amazing expedition, and we couldn’t be happier. First, we enjoyed a Zodiac ride along the coast of Bartolome Island looking for penguins. We had a very unusual encounter with a Galapagos sea lion feeding from a tuna on the rocks, literally tearing it apart. We were all very amazed and spent some time just watching him eat his very fresh breakfast! A white tip reef shark was around as well, trying to get the leftovers that were dripping into the sea. A Sally Lightfoot crab was also nearby, ready to get its portion of the meal. Penguins were swimming by during the feeding session, too.   At 7:00 am we started our walk up to Bartolome’s viewpoint, where we all took great photos of the morning landscape from the top of the island. Back onboard, we had breakfast and prepared for the rest of the morning. Beginning snorkelers went to the beach to learn and refresh their skills, while the deep-water snorkelers were lucky enough to swim with different species of fish, sharks, penguins, marble sting rays, sea turtles, and more. It was already an amazing day, and we still had the afternoon!   In the afternoon we had more great activities; the Global Explorers introduction, photography tips from our photo instructor, and after these, a visit to Dragon Hill on Santa Cruz Island. We started with a Zodiac ride around the Mangrove Ecosystem where we spotted baby black tip and white tip sharks, spotted eagle rays, blue-footed boobies and brown pelicans. We ended this fabulous day walking around the arid zone of this island where we encountered marine iguanas, Galapagos land iguanas, shore birds and the best sight of the day – three American flamingoes flying overhead while we were watching the sunset.