Getting there
There is no airport and no road. South Georgia is reached only by sea, on expedition voyages that sail from the Falkland Islands or from Ushuaia at the tip of South America, usually taking in the island as part of a longer Antarctic itinerary. The crossing is long and often rough, and every landing depends on the weather giving way — nothing about the island is guaranteed.
The first landing
You hear and smell a king colony before you land in it. From the Zodiac, the beach resolves into a shifting mass of black, white and burnt orange, and the sound — a layered, metallic braying from a quarter of a million birds — rolls out across the water. Step ashore at a place like St Andrews Bay or Salisbury Plain and the colony simply surrounds you, running from the surf line back to the foot of the glacier.
Oakum boys and the long chick
Scattered through the crisp adults are the chicks — fat, shaggy and chocolate-brown, once mistaken by sailors for a separate species they called 'oakum boys'. King penguins raise a chick over more than a year, so at any time the colony holds eggs, small chicks and near-grown ones together. The brown crèches huddle in their own groups while the adults commute to and from the sea.
Sharing the beach
The penguins are not alone. Antarctic fur seals pack the tussac behind the beach, and in early summer the males are territorial and quick to charge; southern elephant seals lie in vast, groaning heaps along the strand. Giant petrels and skuas patrol overhead for the weak and the unwary. The whole shoreline is thick with life in a way few places on the planet still are.
Watching well
South Georgia enforces strict biosecurity — boots and gear are scrubbed before every landing to keep foreign seeds and disease off the island — and firm rules on distance. Keep back, move slowly, and let the penguins set the terms; curious birds will often approach of their own accord. The season runs through the austral summer, from November to March, each month offering a different stage of the colony's long year.
