BT – Around Port Charcot

Our destination for the morning was Port Charcot (S 65°03.9′ W 64°01.5′), a bay on the northwest side of Booth Island. Here we went ashore and saw — wait for it — more penguins!

We also had a good view of the melting sea ice to the south.

Most of the penguins were Gentoos yet again (as in the photos above), but there were also a few Adélies, with their white-rimmed eyes and snub black beaks.

After some time ashore we boarded the Zodiacs for a cruise in amongst all the floating ice. There were more seals to be seen (crab-eater seals, I believe), with some of them bearing the scars of attacks by leopard seals when they were younger.

The kayakers seemed to have a great day beneath the steep mountains. We kept losing sight of them as they made their way through all the sea ice.

The landscape, though seemingly still and timeless, was actually changing constantly, as currents shifted the bergs, bringing them together and then moving them apart. There were some fantastic shapes to be seen.

The overcast skies and the resulting grey-yellow light added to the atmosphere of the place.

And for those of my relatives with CMT who might be wondering, the French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot — who explored this area around 1904 – named Port Charcot for his father, the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who was in turn responsible for identifying the eponymous Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.