King Haakon Bay – Cape Rosa & Peggotty Bluff
Our journey in the wake of the James Caird is drawing to its conclusion as we sight South Georgia during breakfast and make our final approach to King Haakon Bay. This crossing has been so very different to that experienced by Shackleton and his men 93 years ago. It has been a Scotia Sea lake.
Hundreds of sea birds can be sighted, including the giant wandering and royal albatrosses and the elegant light-mantled sooty albatross. At the other end of the scale South Georgia diving petrels take flight and head off low across the water with their rapid wing beats.
By mid-day we are entering the bay with green hillsides dressed with mosses and tussock grass. It has been an absent color since Ushuaia. Then we spot penguins and seals on the beaches.
Just after lunch our Captain makes a close approach to Cape Rosa where Shackleton first made landfall after surviving that terrible crossing. It is a tiny protected little cove with a pebble beach at the end. We are all moved with this close sighting and in different ways relive that moment when they made it ashore after their ordeal.
We then headed off for Peggotty Bluff, the second place that the rescue party landed, and from where Shackleton, Worsely and Crean headed off on their crossing of South Georgia.
Soon we were stepping ashore next to the bluff and welcomed by a small group of molting king penguins and a group of weaners. These are roughly month-old elephant seal pups just weaned from their mothers. They are resplendent in their pale shiny new coats. Soon we are all ashore and head off in small groups on different walks to explore this delightful and poignant place.
Along the beach we come across two large bull elephant seals accompanied by females still suckling their pups. Dotted here and there, often in clumps of tussock grass, we see fur seals with their strong musky smell. We come across a stream with melt water. On the other side, dozens of giant petrels and kelp gulls pepper the beach.
Just upstream from the coast we come across a giant petrel feeding frenzy. We spend a lot of time amazed by the scene that unfolds before our eyes. The petrels are eating a dead submerged elephant seal pup. There is lots of posturing with extended wings, upright and fanned tails, sideways motion of their heads and on occasions coming to actual confrontation with a good deal of bill fencing. It would seem that in the end they all got a share of the food.
Just off from these huge birds a little pintado petrel spent the entire time picking up the little tidbits left by its larger cousins. Whilst the giant petrels were feisty and noisy, the pintado was the epitome of silence and peace.
As we settled down for the night we may just have spared a thought for Shackleton, Worsley, Crean, McNeish, Vincent and McCarthy.
