Antarctica -- October-November 2010

Petermann Island.

Looking down from the top of the hill.

The trail in the snow going off to the left hand side of this photo goes to the rocky outcrop where the cormorant nests and the mixed group of peguins shown in an earlier photo. I believe the trail going out of sight in to the right hand side of the photo goes to the place where the small boats landed. Doesn't seem that I took photos that include either of those locations while I was up on top of this hill.

Some of the small flags the expedition staff generally put out in advance of the first tourist boat landings to mark walking trails are visible in this photo. They wanted people to stay on these paths for our safety and to minimize disturbance to the natural environment. For example, the paths were selected to (generally) keep at least 20-30 feet away from any bird nesting areas (with one or two exceptions, where the landings were along rocky shorelines and penguins had built nests near the only places the small boats could access). I'm pretty sure they were following procedures spelled out in part by their permiits from the Antarctic Treaty organization and in part by their insurance carrier.

As previously mentioned, there were no regarding how closely penguins could approach tourists, so long as we stayed on our trails. We would try to stop in the trail to maintain the minimum15-foot distance if a penguin seemed to be about to cross the trail in front of us, but sometimes they were interested in one of us, not what was on the other side of the trail.

(28 Nov 2010)