Salisbury Plain is one of the places on South Georgia that I was most excited to return to, but the weather turned against us today. Due to the large waves we had to land about forty-five minutes from the king penguin colony, and during the hike to the colony the winds slowly started picking up. Fearing a repeat of January’s experience at St. Andrew’s Bay I was on guard, and when the wind began driving the rain horizontally I decided it would be safer to be nearer the boat. David and I ended up returning after only two hours ashore, although Ted and the others have been skiing in the backcountry for more than three hours now. What little time I did have at the colony was again impressive — there aren’t many places in the world that cause a suspense of disbelief, but first sight of this colony is one of them.
Having some spare time aboard allowed me to finally get a shower, and yet again I need to make an offering at whatever altar exists to the shower’s inventor — being clean after five days is as close to godhood as mortal life gets. The afternoon plan is to visit one of the wandering albatross colonies in the Bay of Isles, but the weather may have postponed that — we may yet be able to go, but with eighteen days here losing an afternoon luckily isn’t too terrible.