We continue to head north, moving away from the Antarctic Peninsula itself and over to the South Shetland Islands which lie across the Bransfield Strait to the northwest. These islands have quite a different climate to where we have come from, being wetter and milder much like their northern namesakes. This makes for a slightly different landscape to what we’ve already seen. Most notably, we see a lot more green than we have seen further south, which is particularly apparent at this time of year.

Our first stop of the day, Sally Rocks, showed plenty of this green in the flats just above the beach, which then led up towards a sloping glacier. Near the water we saw an abundance of seals, including southern elephant seals, and Weddell seals, as well as fur seals. The shoreline was scattered with various animal bones and pieces of wood which washed up on the swell-battered beach. This landing also presented us with an opportunity to climb up alongside the edge of the ice, to get a view out over this river of ice.

In the afternoon we visited two sites, Fort Point and Hardy Cove. These sites are in close proximity to each other on Greenwich Island, and are separated by a large glacier face. Fort Point sticks out sharply into the sea, and is home to many fur seals, gentoo penguins, and the occasional resting Weddell seal. Hardy Cove, on the other hand, has relatively little wildlife, occupied mostly by a number of fur seals. However, it is made up of a series of overlapping glacial moraines which allow for unusually close views of the glacier face, without the risks associated with approaching them from the sea. After taking in this spectacle, we began our goodbye to the Antarctic, and set sail for Elephant Island.