The full days and late night last night caught up with me today, and a part of me was actually hoping that bad weather might delay our landing at St. Andrews by a few hours so that I could rest. Luckily that didn’t happen, and for almost eleven hours I roamed around with 350,000 king penguins and a handful of fur seals, elephant seals, skuas, petrels, sheathbills and even reindeer. The weather went from sunny to rainy and back every five minutes, and I actually fell asleep onshore twice, but it was still a great day. The penguin chicks are as curious as always, and it was pretty much guaranteed that whenever I would stop there would be at least one running up to me to nibble on my glove or to follow me around. In addition, while the vast piles of elephant seals are now gone, there were a few groups of the giant beasties lying around, and you can’t help but love a four thousand pound sausage-shaped critter with giant cow eyes that stinks, belches, and ripples blubber when it moves. Time has flown by, and sadly tomorrow will be our second-to-last day on this incredible island.
