There aren’t too many things in this world that make getting up at 4:30 in the morning worthwhile; Gold Harbor, South Georgia is one of them. Imagine a beach with roughly 200,000kg of king penguin, 500,000kg of elephant seal and several thousand pounds of fur seal puppy. When you add a few gentoos and a hanging glacier in the back, it’s speechlessness, that’s what you get. You can see the photographs and you can hear the stories, but stepping off onto this beach for the first time is something you will never, ever forget. The looks on the faces exiting the Zodiacs say it all; jaw dropping astonishment.
The first thing you are greeted with is a massive mound of grumbling elephant seals, all big eyes and stinky wrinkles. They have gathered here to molt, the annual shedding of their fur and first layer of skin. They lay basking in the early light sloughing large chunks of hide into the black sand and they’re cranky and making it well known. The small stream is full of fur seal pups battling with each other and there is a constant flow of king penguins to and from the surf. I heard several people say they would be content to just stay here for the remainder of their time on South Georgia and I might be in agreement. But as is always the case, our incredible expedition leader, Lisa Kelley, has an awesome afternoon location for us to ease the departure from Gold harbor.
Cooper Bay, with its mountainous scenery brought us the addition of our sixth penguin species, the macaroni penguin. His Jimmy Durante beak and Three Stooges hairstyle were hard to mistake but his cliff nesting habits left a lot to our imagination. The Zodiac tour was not over, however; it was topped off by the mayhem of fur seal pups playing in the shallows among the kelp. The water was actually boiling with puppy. The absolute degree of biomass at South Georgia is difficult to convey, but the rate that the guests are filling their camera’s memory cards suggest they are going to try very hard.
