Cruise Day 10 South Shetland Islands

Greetings to all!

It is Jan 13th, 2023, and we have started our return to Chile. As we trek north we have two stops today, first at Half Moon Island and then at nearby Yankee Harbour.

We wake to sunshine on Half Moon Island! But the forecast for the day is cooler with a slight chance of rain, so we don’t expect the sunshine to endure. The island is beautiful in the sunlight!

The rock formations here are rugged and frightening, but mysteriously beautiful!

We see a zodiac heading out to scope our landing spot. Fingers crossed for good news!

We are in the second wave of zodiacs to go out this morning. This allows us to sleep in a bit and have a nice breakfast in La Terrazza, the Italian restaurant. (They do a mostly buffet breakfast and lunch, in case I forgot to mention this before.)

Joy is not feeling well, so she stays on the ship and I go out with Lu and Duane. Here’s our exit from the ship – the last time you saw this was on polar plunge day!

The area we are visiting is stunning!

To the right is a flat area with some huts. These are Argentinian emergency huts. We’ll get a closer look later.

We land on an area with no snow, so we are only dealing with rocks, mud, and guano (penguin poop).

Half Moon Island is home to Chinstrap penguins! We haven’t seen many Chinstraps so far, so this is a nice change!

There is the deteriorating hulk of a very interesting boat on the shore!

The Chinstraps near the landing spot are entertaining! But their nests are up in the rocks, so we start walking.

The walk to the Chinstrap rookeries is lengthy. I think this image of the rocks is striking! The snowy mountain in the photo about six up from here was visible in the background, then almost instantly vanished in fog!

These two little guys are walking beside me.

Here’s a snapshot of the two.

I attempt to follow the flagged path to the main rookery but the path is very yucky with muddy, slimy penguin poop! I focus on finding rocks to the side of the path to minimize the amount of guano I collect on my boots. Fortunately for you I don’t have any photos of the yucky stuff! (I wouldn’t post it even if I did have photos…) Somewhere along this area is where I lose track of Lu and Duane…

The hillside above me is covered with Chinstraps!

I finally arrive at a viewing point for the rookery. There are Chinstraps as far as I can see!

These guys are headed my way, but I’m going to the left, so I get out of their way.

And I finally arrive at the closest rookery.  These Chinstraps have chicks! Yay! Almost every nest has two chicks.

The honking is more of a group activity here! One starts and soon four or six join in!

This is my favorite parent-chick photo! A very tender moment!

It’s time to head to the other end of Half Moon Island! I begin the trek back along the rocks, trying to avoid the muddy spots.

Looking up at the peak that was behind me I watch the penguins on the snow, and a curious object catches my eye. It looks like a navigation aid that fell off the rocky peak. Do you see the orange and white object on the upper right?

I pass the spot where the zodiac landed us, and head up the ridge, following the red flags. To my right is the Argentinian emergency hut complex. (I told you we’d get closer!) We aren’t allowed to wander over there since these must be maintained for the emergency operations they are designed to support.

I continue down the hill and out to the gravel spit where I see a lot of red coats.  There are Weddell seals here! They look to be slumbering peacefully!

Closer to the point of the spit we find the remains of a blue whale! It’s too bad I don’t have a person in the shot to provide some scale, but that rib is about 12-14 ft long. I’m not sure what the bone on the left is – we speculate about it being one of the vertebrae. It’s about 4 ft long.

I have fifteen minutes left before I’m supposed to be back on a zodiac. I timed my walk out to the spit, so I know I have about a ten-minute walk back to the zodiac. That ridge between the two large snowy patches is my target!  For reference, the Argentinian emergency huts are on the other side of the two rocky outcrops behind the left snow patch.

I haven’t seen Lu and Duane since we disembarked the zodiac over an hour earlier, but I pass Duane on my way back to the ridge – he’s just now heading out to the spit! He says Lu is hanging out on the ridge, waiting for him. I go to find her.

I find Lu. She waits for Duane, and I head to the zodiac. The penguins are hopping around the water!

We make it back to the ship and have fun scrubbing our boots and pant legs!

I was happy to see Joy is feeling better! We had lunch as the ship repositioned across the bay to Yankee Harbour. Literally across the harbor!  We still see Half Moon Island from Yankee Harbour.

Yankee Harbour is visible from the ship. There is a distinct arm surrounding the harbor!

It doesn’t take long for the zodiacs to do their check. As this one approaches the ship Schalk gives us the 15-minute warning!

We head down to the Mud Room and find ourselves on the first zodiac heading out! This is the first chance we’ve had to get a group photo! We’ll, almost the group.

I was sitting on the opposite side of the zodiac, and we aren’t allowed to stand or move when the zodiac is operating! So my part of the group photo is a selfie!

This is another no-snow landing and lots of rocks to walk, but unlike Half Moon Island, this is flat walking. We first see a handful of elephant seals snoozing on the beach. There are young bulls that haven’t yet grown their long probiscis (nose).

They look surprisingly like Weddell seals, but our expedition guides assure us these are juvenile elephant seals. They’re cute, but far from cuddly!

This island has Gentoo penguins. There are many penguins on the move, so we have to watch where we are, and not interrupt their journeys. Sometimes this is tough – I had to stand still for about 7 minutes while penguin after penguin crisscrossed my path. This is good because it lets me get pictures of some penguins up close without me approaching them.

I like this little guy!

The biggest difference from these and the previous Gentoos we’ve see is the penguins on this island have been successful at having chicks! The Gentoo chicks are white and gray, not all gray like the Chinstrap chicks are.

And then it’s time to head back to the zodiac. This is the last time we don the life jackets!

As we leave the shore we catch a glimpse of the kayakers coming around the point. We trained for the kayak, but due to poor weather conditions we never put our name on the list. There is just too much to see on shore! But the people who kayaked all said they loved it – they said it is so quiet and peaceful on the water!

This is the last excursion of this cruise! Yay and Wah! Prep for the excursions is tedious and tiring, but the sites we visit are fabulous! I wouldn’t mind trying to do this again, once we’ve checked off the rest of the bucket list destinations!

According to the itinerary tonight we’ll sail around Robben Island and through the Nelson Straight to reach the Drake Passage. The forecast is looking pretty good for our crossing, with a little weather trying to catch us at the end of the crossing to the Beagle Channel. But this little cruise ship can put on some speed to stay ahead of weather. We’ll see!