South Sandwich Islands

The piña coladas on this ship are not great but they do make an excellent pisco sour so that has become the pre dinner drink of choice!!!! Yesterday afternoon and evening was more of the same, lectures, briefings, dinner etc.  Luke (the Irish guy) talked about his two years working with the British team on South Georgia a few years back.  It was most interesting learning how they coped in extreme conditions. I did go to trivia, the subject was ‘the solar system’ and thankfully there were multiple choice questions.  We did manage 13 out of 20, not too bad I thought!  

Arrived in the vicinity of Zavadovski Island in the Sandwich Islands at 9am today.  It is the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands and the basaltic stratovolcano on the Island is known as Mount Curry.  It has a large lava platform extending east from two parasitic cones on the side of the main edifice.  These islands generally comprise 11 mostly volcanic islands and many are still active.  Zavadovski Island is home to between 2 and 3 million  chinstrap penguins - I think we saw at least half of them swimming around us!  Also saw a pod of whales and although there were no obvious seals in the water we could see them with binoculars on the shore.  And the smell of the penguins was horrible!! The coastline is wild, obviously lots of blowholes dotted around judging by the water spray.  A scout boat was lowered to assess the conditions and it has been decided to up anchor and move on to a more sheltered bay on a different island.  But nothing is set in stone, we are at the mercy of the elements and safety is most important.  Another large iceberg was sighted too.  While waiting to hear an update on our activities waiters came around with a hot toddy - I think it was tea with baileys, quite delicious.  

So we are now sailing towards Visokoi Island, will take about three hours.  This Island is uninhabited too. It was discovered in 1819 by a Russian expedition under Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (sounds German!) who named the island Visokoi because of its conspicuous height.  He also named Zavodovski island after the Lieutenant who was a First Officer if his ship, the Imperial Navy sloop-of-war Vostok.  

The South Sandwich Islands are uninhabited though a permanently manned Argentine research station was located on Thule Island from 1976-1982.  Apparently the British came in during the Falklands war and blew it up!  There are a couple of automatic weather stations around these islands, thankfully.