Plan B - Bleaker Island (Falklands)

At our daily evening briefing yesterday we were told that there was a significant wind front that was approaching from Antarctica smack bang between us and our next destination South Georgia (two days sea travel away). The screenshot from Windy app shows the size of it with predicted waves of 4 - 6 metres! So we stayed put here and moved down to an island called Bleaker Island - not an inspiring name but at least it wasn't Bleakest Island! All the crew were actually very excited to have another day in the Falklands because they believe one day isn't enough.
Bleaker Island is one of the larger of the 778 smaller islands of the Falkland group and is the home to one family cattle farm - it is bleak with no trees, only low lying grasses and shrubbery BUT lots of penguins. We were deposited on a beach and had a 2km walk to the rocky cliffs of a bay which was home to a large colony of several hundreds of Rockhopper penguins - the name derived because they literally hop up rocky cliff faces to their nesting area on the top - in this case about a 40 to 50 m climb. They also have the most amazing yellow feathery eyebrows which makes them look like old gentlemen at a Parisian opera house. They share their rookery with cormorants as well.
We then walked back to the other end of the island where there were more Magellanic penguins but a bigger amount of Gentoo Penguins plus two sets of King Penguins with beautiful bright yellow markings. We made our way back over the paddocks dodging the returning penguins from feeding in the sea and watched them torpedoing along in the waves and rocketing out onto the beach to then waddle ungainly up the sand back to their burrows or rookery.
We expect we will set sail tomorrow to South Georgia which will be rough but not what it could of been.Leggi altro