Right Whale Bay -- wildlife up close and personal

Finally, a landing on South Georgia! It was a rainy day, but a mystical dreamy kind of rain... we felt like explorers trying to find land through the fog all morning. Finally there were shadows, and more importantly tons of noise - skwawk, ooot oot oot, we knew something new and fabulous was out there. We donned our rain gear and camera protection and hit the zodiacs. It was truly amazing how the king penguin white bellies and orange touches just glowed in the misty rain. Beads of water formed on their weatherproof feathers. We were able to get extremely close to both the penguins and huge colonies of fur seals. There were some white morph seal pups that were just adorable, and a few elephant seals patrolled the beach. The sand and rocks were all black which creates the perfect backdrop for all the animals. We did a short landing to practice procedures, getting our first glimpse into the psyche of adult female fur seals with pups... do NOT get too close, they're quite protective! Penguins and seal pups all swam around us as we returned to Ortelius. It was a beautiful day.