We woke up early for our landing at Bongrain Point (67°43′S 67°48′W). However the winds were pretty high and they delayed the landing by an hour.
We got ready at a leisurely pace and were ready to go when they called the crabeater seals. The ride to the landing point took a bit of time due to the waves and challenges unloading people out of the boat in surging waves.
It was eventually our turn and we got out of the boat on to land efficiently as possible but Jacob got a wet foot (“a soaker”, as the Canadians would say) when the waves surged as we were climbing out.
Once off the Zodiac, we walked up the beach to a very large Adélie penguin colony. We also saw some of the circle of life by finding a dead seal carcass while walking the rocky beach
Soon after our landing, we loaded back in to a zodiac to go on our afternoon cruising around the bay near Bongrain Point. During the cruising we only saw two lazy crabeater seals.
One of the downsides of a cruise ship so large is that they have a lottery for all excursions off the boat that aren’t standard landings or cruising. Today we were lucky enough to get drawn in the lottery for a photo landing with only 5 people coming to the landing so we could be closer to the wildlife. After the cruising we rushed to meet the photo landing group and got back on the zodiacs. We got to the landing and immediately saw a lone penguin wandering along the beach and a large fur seal lounging on the rocks.
We then wandered towards the penguin colony and had some very close encounters with penguins returning to their nests from the ocean. Also during our photo landing Jacob met some other Canadians and they took a picture together showing some Canada pride 🇨🇦.
Once back on the boat we were a bit tired, so we had a relaxed dinner, played some cribbage at the bed and headed to bed early.