2nd December
An absolutely gloriously sunny day and
I had the good fortune to be invited out by Ella, the KEP boating
officer who I met back in Cambridge, as she was showing Chris, here
to run the museum, a great day-walk out over the mountains.
The terrain and landscape felt so much
different from Bird Island. There when I go uphill it's almost all
through tussac and mud, with seals hiding in the gaps. Here it was
across scree slopes and up soft snow fields. None of them are easy
walking but it's nice to have the variety.
The views were just
stunning; clear blue skies over turquoise waters, bisected by
mountain ranges that, although not huge by the standards of
continental ones, look as impressive and daunting as anywhere in the
world. I've heard South Georgia described as a slice of the Alps
chopped off and dumped in the ocean and that sounds pretty accurate
to me.
As we sat eating our lunch beside a
Papua Lake Ella was able to point out one of the glaciers in the
distance and the alarming amount it has retreated in the last ten
years. Recent enough that many of the maps still in use here are
inaccurate for that area.
Near the lake we were berated by Terns,
while on top of the ridges we had a few pristine Snow Petrels fly
past us, but the place felt so quiet compared to Bird Island where
Geeps whine and albatross mutter while there's a constant background
throb and wail of Macaronis and seals.
It felt a priviledge to see such a
place on such a day and, happy and sunburnt, I went out after dinner
to watch the young Elephant Seals. It's been so nice to see so many
little weiners; freshly moulted pups sleeping all over the shore,
often lying alongside their buddies. The most fun to be had though is
in watching the young ones play fighting in the shallows – raising
themselves up then slamming into each others necks before one looks
too far up, gets distracted by the sky and is then surprised by its
combatant. It's a playful recreation of the brutal fights the males
get themselves into when establishing dominance over a harem of
females, except those guys stand taller than me and can do some real
damage.
Jerry.
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