South Georgia is a 170km long island of mountains and glaciers in the middle of the South Atlantic inhabited only by a few British Antarctic Survey scientists and support staff . Luckily for us we had to stop at the King Edward Point ( KEP ) base for a doctor exchange , Hazel our companion of the last few weeks left us to start a one year stay as resident doctor for the base and John joined us having just spent 14 months on the island . We in the meantime had almost a full day to do a bit of walking on land , meet the wildlife and explore the former whaling station at Grytviken . The whaling station is an atmospheric bit of industrial heritage but the simple facts that 55,000 whales were processed here including the largest blue whale ever recorded are quite enough to make one pause . Now however the island is one giant wildlife reserve and the seas around a model of sustainable fishery .
The wildlife was strewn along the coast , with seals everywhere . This was a more or less random mix of Elephant Seals and Fur Seals . The Elephant seals were duly enormous , especially the few males , but they mostly just lay about on and near the beach looking beautiful with enormous round eyes . The Fur Seals were rather more active and pretty much everywhere , including in the whaling station , and along the path . The adults were not as beautiful as the elephant seals but they had numerous absurdly cute and friendly pups . This did mean the adults were noisily defensive which made walking anywhere near the coast quite difficult if not actually dangerous . In between the seals there were scattered patches of King Penguins – doing the usual penguin things of standing , shuffling around , swimming and being photogenic . Then there were numerous Giant Petrels , we have seen lots of these at sea but they looked twice as large on land and left footprints like those of a small dinosaur in the snow . Finally as an added bonus , which would have counted as the highlight of any normal day , there were Antarctic Terns .
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