The clue is in the title - this is not going to be a short
entry so I'd sit down with a nice cup of tea before you start reading ....... or
just skip the words and look at the pictures of fluffy baby penguins. What follows is an account of my most recent holiday
and long-awaited trip to St Andrews Bay with Ella which, whilst most excellent,
was not entirely without the odd hiccup.
We have been trying to get over to St Andrews for a while
now, but various things have always been against us. The opportunity finally arose last week as
the weather looked good, neither of us had anything desperately important to do
on base, the snow has melted enough for us to think we may actually manage the
walk with the help of snowshoes and people were happy to drop us off and pick
us up from Sorling beach. It's still a
good 5-7hr walk to the bay from here depending on conditions and, whilst the
forecast looked fine when we left, Ella and I don't have the best luck when it
comes to holiday weather. Some rapid
packing was done, lots of working out how to reduce the weight of our massive
packs was attempted (basically not possible) and we were off. True to form the weather rapidly deteriorated
almost as soon as we were dropped off at Sorling Beach and we were soon walking
through fairly thick fog. Since the maps
of South Georgia don't exactly lend themselves to micro-navigation in zero visibility
we were more than a little grateful for the GPS. Unfortunately even the GPS can fail when
human error prevails and, just when we thought we were nearly at the hut, it
became rather apparent that we had made a slight error along the way. We looked over the cliff and down onto a
rocky shoreline which was most definitely not St Andrews Bay. St Andrews Bay has a long and smoothly
curving sandy beach which is home to half a million penguins. I know that because I've been there before on
a boat. This beach had neither sand nor
penguins and I definitely hadn't been there before. We looked at the map again. We realised where we were. I reached out and held Ella's arm. She looked at me in a mildly quizzical
manner. I remembered I was British,
pulled myself together and let go of her arm.
Ella merely remained pulled together (despite being a half-French cheese-eating
surrender monkey, she does much better at being British than me) and made a
plan. We turned around and set off in
the direction of the hut. That direction
meant going back up hill. I cried a
little bit inside (and only inside) the first time we hit more rubbish
sinking-type snow and my snowshoe got caught on the crust and I fell over my
own feet......again. Wine gums were
consumed. I really, really like wine
gums. Everything would be ok.
Thanks to some excellent navigation by Ella and the wonders
of GPS, and despite some unpleasantly thick fog with basically no visibility (lots
of "go left, no more left, no your other left, now more right" as I
pottered along in front and attempted to break a half-decent trail for her to
follow), we made it to the hut. Maybe a
little later than planned. In fact, I
will admit that when the hut appeared out of the fog I did have to fight a
strong urge to run up and kiss it.
Luckily I remembered in time that I was very tired and wearing snowshoes
and thus running anywhere was just a terrible, terrible idea. Once heavy bags had been dumped and dry
clothes donned, it was time to do battle with the Tilley lamp and Primus
stove. Quite why we thought this would
be a good time for me to attempt to light the Tilley lamp while Ella went to
get the water I'm not sure, but I suspect tiredness played a part. I'm terrible with the Tilley lamps and this
was no exception. Ella returned with
water to find me looking very sheepish, surrounded by a strong smell of burning,
gazing at a very black and unhappy-looking mantle. While this was being sorted out I moved on to
create more havoc with the Primus stove which had one broken leg and a tendency
to fall over. I can actually light these
reasonably well all by myself and it was soon roaring away happily with about
two litres of water delicately resting on it in a pan. Not for long.
Two litres of water was soon splashing over the worktop and onto the
floor after I forgot just how careful I needed to be when adjusting the
pan. Personally I'd have given up and
gone to bed at this point, but I was reminded that neither of us do well
without food so some persistence was required.
While I cleared up the mess I'd made Ella boiled water on the camping
stove and eventually we sat down to a delicious meal of rehydrated lamb pilaf
(me) and beef stroganoff (Ella).......and chocolate. Lots of chocolate. On a far more positive note, the beds in the
hut were huge and extremely comfortable and I was soon dozing off to sleep and
dreaming about penguins.
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| Literally the only blue sky we had on the whole trip! |
The next couple of days were excellent as they involved
penguins in unbelievable, indescribable, jaw dropping numbers. Lots and lots and lots of large, brown and
very fat balls of fluff that will apparently turn into sleek and shiny adult
penguins one day, but for the time being just stood around looking extremely
cute, but thoroughly pissed off with life in general. A small amount of walking was involved to get
to the penguins and two quite large and deep rivers separate the hut from the
colony. Luckily some very old and not
very waterproof waders were provided to help with the river crossings. Attempts were made to fix the waders, but
sadly gaffa tape just doesn't stick to wet neoprene and the evenings were mostly
spent drying socks. Ella's attempts to
cook her sock into a state of dryness over the primus stove were not entirely
successful, but luckily the hut did get fairly warm once the Tilley lamp was
going properly so all was good. Also, none
of this really mattered anyway as we had penguins, wine, pasta and chocolate
and had finally made it to St Andrews Bay!
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| It is impossible to have too many pictures of baby king penguins |
Unfortunately Ella had tweaked her knee quite badly on the
journey over to St Andrews while we were floundering around in waist deep snow
coming down a rather steep hill. Walking
was really the only option for getting back to base thanks to a distinct lack
of helicopters on the island. In view of
the iffy knee situation and forecast of more snow we suspected we might not be
able to manage our usual lightning fast pace on the return journey and decided to
spread the walk out over two days with a night of camping in between. Whilst I think a new knee would have been the
preferred option, a comprehensive and varied regime of painkillers, combined
with a fairly impressive display of stubbornness on Ella's part meant we
actually made ok time as we headed back up the steep hills and through more
waist deep snow. Once up high visibility
was again rubbish, but this time we were well practiced at the "left a
bit, right a bit" style of navigation so, whilst not ideal, it wasn't
actually too tricky to get to Hound Bay and our intended campsite. Unfortunately, one of the many problems with
the delightful combination of fog, flat light and snow is that it is literally
impossible to pick the easiest route through undulating terrain. It is more than a little frustrating to find
that you have unnecessarily climbed a large mound only to have to descend down
the other side of it knowing that, had you walked about 20m to your right or
left, the route would have been completely flat. There are only so many time that you can tell
yourself it's all extra training and therefore good for you; especially when
the person you're with has a painful knee which hurts much more going uphill
and you're feeling very bad about your poor route choice.
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| Hound bay campsite |
I won't go into detail about the camp at Hound Bay. The essential information is that it snowed a
lot, wasn't as cold as we expected and was more than a little damp. More dehydrated food was consumed and we had
the delights of an elephant seal chorus on the beach below to help lull us to
sleep. Also, whilst I essentially
fidgeted for the entire night and apparently muttered to myself on the odd
occasion when I fell asleep, Ella remained so still and quiet that I actually
had to check she was still breathing at one point. After packing up A LOT of soggy kit, I was
trusted with the GPS for the final leg of the journey (also foggy) as we
decided it was probably a good time for me to check I was capable of using it. All was going remarkably well until I tripped
over my snowshoes (again) whilst trying to get the damn thing out of my pocket
and then hit myself in the shin with one of my walking poles. The poles were sent flying across the snow,
possibly followed by a string of terrible words that I won't repeat here. Ella returned the poles to me without saying
anything. I regained my sense of humour. More wine gums were consumed and the rest of
the journey went off without a hitch.
As we headed down to the beach at Sorling for the pick up
the sun appeared through the clouds for the first time in five days and we knew
the holiday was over. For all the small
trials and tribulations the trip had entailed, it was still an amazing holiday
and I do feel very, very privileged to have had the opportunity to stand in the
middle of half a million penguins and see parts of South Georgia that very few
people will ever get to see. What's even
better is that Ella and I are still considering going on holiday again in the
future; albeit to huts that are next to the beach so we can be dropped off and
picked up by boat so we don't need to do any walking whatsoever. I think I will also buy myself a GPS when I
get home.
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| What half a million penguins look like |
