Salisbury Plain

Dropping anchor in the Bay of Isles our first stop of the day was Salisbury Plain. We were greeted to similar weather conditions as its English namesake with the wind growing stronger and the sleet clouding visibility. There the similarity ended. As we jumped out of the zodics and out onto the beach, hundreds of king penguins clustered in around us. The baron landscape was dotted with fur seals as far as could be seen. We made our way across the plains trying to avoid the fur seals. Every so often one would consider us to be trespassing and we would pick up the pace as a brief chase ensued. Once across boggy creeks we arrived at the King Penguin colony. Over 60,000 penguins huddled together in the shelter of the tussock covered hills. The brown fluffy chicks were calling out for food and the downy chicks (over 12 months old now) were picking out the last of their baby feathers. As we stood there busily snapping with the camera, the penguins wandered about oblivious to their visitors. As the horizontal sleet died down and the sun came out the wind picked up giving a wind chill of -15C. We struggled back across the plain towards the beach. As the katabatic winds exceeded 100 km/ph we hunkered down in the sand before be selected as guinea pigs to make the first trip back. Soaked through to the skin as the zodiac bounced across the waves we arrived back at the ship. Unfortunately the crossing wasn’t considered safe, so the rest of the group endured a 3 hour wait, huddled on the beach.