Penguin Finale.

 Our time in Antarctica was now drawing to a close, but we still had one landing to do, and that was at Yankee Harbour, on Greenwich Island, part of the South Shetland Islands. This also turned out to be my favourite penguin stop of the whole trip. During the 3 hours spent here we had lots of snow falling for much of the time, so much so, that the camera occasionally focused on the snow falling, rather than the penguins!!

As we walked along the spit towards the main part of the island, groups of Gentoo penguins were seen porpoising along the sea by us. Although we mostly missed getting them out of the water, occasionally we did catch them.

Gentoo Penguin Porpoising. (see the penguin on the left about to emerge).

Gentoo Penguin making a splash.

As we strolled along, we kept coming across small groups of Gentoo Penguins making their way to the sea to go on their fishing trips.

Gentoo Penguins in the snow.

When we reached the main colony, we had perfect timing, as we found another mating pair. Once again, it was lovely to witness the tender, mutual grooming and neck pecking that went on as they mated.

Mating Gentoo Penguins.

We also saw our only confirmed South Polar Skua's at this site. 

South Polar Skua.

As we started our track back to where we would pick up the Zodiac craft to take us back to the main ship, we noticed a small group of people looking at a group of Penguins. It soon became clear that one of the penguins was different, and we were delighted to see it was an Adélie Penguin. As mentioned on an earlier post, we were too early in the season to see the large numbers of these penguins returning to their nesting sites, and to this point we had only seen a couple of distant views of them, so to see one close up was totally unexpected and very welcome. Unfortunately, the penguin wasn't too happy with the attention, and it started to head back towards the sea, being chased by a couple of people. Seeing what was happening I spoke loud enough for them to hear, not to chase it, and the penguin very quickly calmed back down again, giving us the chance to admire it at a safe distance. We were very lucky that we were some of the last people to return to the Zodiacs, as many of our fellow travellers missed seeing this beautiful penguin.

Adélie Penguin grooming once it had settled back down.

Adélie Penguin propelling itself along.

Our last view of the Adélie Penguin before it walked further away.

When we reached the Zodiacs we could see a great raft of Gentoo Penguins out in the bay, obviously in the middle of a feeding frenzy. Fortunately, we were taken out to the raft of birds where we could see the penguins under water hunting. The water was so clear we could see them very well. All the time there were plenty of penguins swimming on the surface resting, before they once again dived to hunt further. One of the group had a Go Pro, and they managed to get some tremendous footage of the penguins underwater.

Gentoo Penguins hunting.

Once we had returned to the ship we set sail to Deception Island, which although good to see, and experience snow shoes for the first time, there was very little wildlife in evidence. However, the geography was interesting. We also saw an Orca hunt just before we arrived, as well as several Humpback Whales.  

Lisa with the Snow Shoes!!

After Deception Island it was back to sea for the 2 day trip across the notorious Drake's Passage to land at Ushuaia. The passage and our day at Ushuaia will be my final post from this totally epic trip.