This morning I removed my scopolamine patch and started to feel better quite quickly.
We arrived at West Point on West Falkland in the morning. Only seven people live on this island and they are primarily sheep herders. Most of our ship mates went onto the island to see the nesting albatrosses and rockhopper penguins as well as to have tea and cakes at a local house. Us kayakers had our first session. Rick and I were in a double and we kayaked for about 45 minutes leaving from the beach. We kayaked along the shore looking at the wildlife. Here are a couple of pictures of the kayakers.
We saw birds and water fowl but I couldn’t tell you their names. We also saw a couple of elephant seals. Here are pictures of some of the wildlife we saw.
After about 45 minutes of kayaking they took us back to the ship where we changed out of our kayaking dry suits and then we went ashore. This is a picture of the buildings along the shore line.
Here are some pictures of the landscape. It was desolate, clearly a harsh environment.
After a 5 minute jeep ride we came to a nesting area for black-brow albatrosses and rockhopper penguins. The babies were relatively mature but most still had their down. They have down to keep them warm when they are babies but must grow feather in order to swim or fly. The albatross babies sit on a pedestal nest. There was a lot of squawking for food. Here are pictures.
We didn’t have time to go to the local house for tea and cakes but here’s a picture of it.
We headed back to the ship in the zodiacs for lunch.
During lunch the ship moved to Saunders Island where there was quite a large penguin colony as well as sheep grazing. Here we saw rockhopper, gentoo, megellanic, and king penguins.
We returned to the ship where we had our daily debriefing and dinner.