Friday 10 December 2010

Deception island and Walker Bay

Early this morning some of our esteemed co-workers went on a hike to Bailey Head and the penguin colony.
I was posted on a smaller mountain (105m) overlooking the whole caldera of Deception island in beautiful calm weather. eventually i got some snow showers and some wind.
Old BAS hangar in whalers Bay
during the day i had some visits by some "blue-coats" and i spent the morning with taking photographs and seeking shelter from the wind behind a semi-small rock;0)
As always when the low tide comes in Whalers Bay, the warm geothermal water comes out, so you can warm up your feet and fingers.

At hrs 1230 operations ended and we got back on the ship for some lunch and downloading of photographs before doing a new landing at Walker Bay, Livingston island at hrs 1500. this island is mostly covered in glaciers and is situated just North of Deception island.

Snow and tephra field in Whalers Bay
wThe landing here went well to, and there were many elephant seals dozing of on the beach and a bunch of gentoo- and chinstrap-penguins. During the afternoon the wind and waves picked up, so the landings got a bit more hard-working. After a long day in the cooler it felt good to have some warm water warming up frozen limbs and eating deer at the buffet...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hej Bjarki, hej Anna - getting ready ready to head west tomorrow, so have been mostly takin gcare of Chirstmas packages etc. and not oo much following the blog - but have now caught up and will do better in the next two weeks. I am VERY glad I was not on that cruise ship, I would have soon been hoping to die, and NOTHING left on the inside. : )) You have been seeing some beautiful country,I'm glad you got to land on Cape Horn! And all your Sirius and Svalbard days of course mean that you are only joking when you complain about the weather, right? ;) Safe journey home.