If only there were some way to bottle the sounds and smells of this place and send them home. Then you would understand the whole of the story.
Our journey is drawing to an end today and like so many movies the conclusion includes a sunset; flaming crimson spot-lights from a navy sea. The sun lingers on and on here in the southern latitudes like a lover reluctant to depart. Most of us are gathered on the aft deck. Some are in laughing groups but there are twosomes scattered here and there and even an occasional solitary figure choosing to absorb these memories in his or her own private fashion.
The sea has a distinctive odor, accentuated in the early morn or late in the evening. One might call it the scent of productivity here in the southern ocean but until you have experienced it, that means little. It's a little like the image of green. We all know what that is but what words fit precisely? Mix in a hint of eau de sea salt and you come a little closer. The sound of the surf must accompany this fragrance for the two senses meld. Our ears might hear the crashing of waves against rocky cliff or their tumbling roll on a white sandy beach where king penguins stand. Far from land our bow cuts through the water and we hear a rush, a whoosh as the surface folds back and tumbles into itself, white froth absorbed into inky darkness.
As we walked the hillsides of West Point Island the smell of peat wafted around us, enveloping us in comfort and quiet. The serenity dissipated with the trill of a long-tailed meadowlark ringing nearby and bringing that sense of sound once more into play. It was not too far a stroll to reach the opposite shore. Although we had landed on a gently sloping beach, we had been climbing ever higher and the end of the trail was a precipitous drop. Life existed in abundance here. Raucous calls resembled trumpets or bleats of sheep and cattle but all emitted from the syrinxes of several bird species. The familiar scent of penguin guano blended with that of moist dark earth, earth being probed by the huge but delicate beak of a black-browed albatross repairing its chimney-like nest. Pedestals of tussock grass rustled although there was no breeze. The source of this disturbance invariably proved to have bright red eyes, a golden crest and all the fierceness of an eighteen-inch high rockhopper penguin.
