We last left off halfway through an amazing three-week cruise from the southernmost tip of Latin America all the way across the ocean to Cape Town, South Africa. My girlfriend Karyna and I boarded the ship in Puerto Williams, Chile. We had a great time cruising to the Falkland Islands, where we took some tours, learned a bit about the history, culture, and politics, and enjoyed wandering around looking at the scenery and the wildlife.
After a long but lovely day at sea filled with a visit to the captain’s bridge and lots of good food from our Indian chef, who had taken an interest in spoiling us gastronomically, we arrived in South Georgia. Join us as we explore South Georgia, the Sandwich Islands, and the most remote archipelago on earth, where one of our fellow cruisers would experience a nearly fatal excursion. 😨
Welcome to South Georgia
The sea was calm on our arrival to South Georgia, but we had to steer through a thick layer of fog before we could see the land up ahead.
The landscape was very rugged, and although the fog began to clear, the sea became too rough for us to dock safely. After navigating around the rocky and rugged terrain, we finally dropped anchor and were looking forward to seeing more of South Georgia the next day.
We spent five full days in South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, where we visited many stunning places. Each day we anchored in a different location where we enjoyed walking along the beaches and seeing the wildlife, including seals, sea lions, penguins, a variety of other birds, and some elephant seals. One day it was too rough to dock, so we zipped around in a zodiac boat instead to take in the views from the sea, but the other days we got to walk on the land and see all of the wildlife up close.
On our first day there, we visited St Andrews Bay. The bay is just over three kilometers wide and has the world’s largest breeding colony of king penguins with half a million birds. 🐧
Around the bay, we saw some seals hanging out with the penguins, sea lions playing, and a few massive elephant seals just lounging around and soaking up the sun.
We also saw a few retreating glaciers in the distance that left lakes and beaches behind as they continue to slowly melt.
To be completely honest, the bay smelled atrocious. If you’ve ever seen penguins in real life, you know that they usually stink to high hell, and the more penguins there are, the more they reek. Regardless of the smell, though, it was an awesome experience to see that many penguins in one place.
A Whale of a Time
The next day we docked in Grytviken, formerly a whaling station and still the largest settlement with the best harbor on the island.
The whaling station shut down nearly 60 years ago when the population of whales in the area began to dwindle. However, even all these years later, remnants of the whaling station remain in the form of whale bones, abandoned whaling ships, and crumbling processing plants scattered around the island.
Today there are no permanent residents in the settlement, but it is still visited by researchers, the military, some staff, and only the most adventurous travelers.
While we were there, we also learned about this settlement’s role in the Falklands War. It was won by the Argentinian forces early in the war, but just three weeks later, it was reclaimed by the British without them firing a single shot or losing any British lives.
The settlement has a museum, a church, and a cemetery, but even those are quiet and most of the settlement appears to be abandoned.
Explore Everywhere
Grytviken’s cemetery boasts the remains of famous explorer Ernest Shackleton, which we went to pay homage to. Shackleton was one of the most famous early explorers of the Antarctic. On his most famous expedition, his ship got trapped in the ice and eventually sank. He and his crew spent months camping on the ice before they took lifeboats many miles over the rough ocean to Elephant Island, but the land there was inhospitable and it was unlikely that they’d be rescued from there.
Shackleton took a few guys back on the lifeboat and sailed it to the unoccupied side of this island before embarking on a 51-kilometer, 36-hour, dangerous mountain hike toward the whaling stations to seek help for the rest of his crew that he’d left behind.
They finally arrived at the whaling station of Stromness, from where they were able to send a boat back to rescue their companions still stranded on Elephant Island.
Inspired by Shackleton’s story, I decided to embark on a four-hour hike that would trace the last steps of his long journey to safety at Stromness. The hike wasn’t too bad for me, but of course, I only traced a portion of Shackleton’s journey, and I did it well-fed and well-equipped rather than starving and frostbitten.
Next, we went to Salisbury Plain, which is nicely situated between two glaciers. It was full of king penguins, elephant seals, and cute Antarctic fur seals, which made for a fun day.
Finally, we visited the beautiful Fortuna Bay before returning to the ship for a few long days at sea.
The World’s Most Remote Archipelago
After leaving South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, we spent a few more days at sea on our way to Tristan da Cunha, the most remote archipelago in the world, and home to the most remote settlement on earth. The capital there is called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, and it has a population of only about 240 people.
As the name implies, this island is another territory of the U.K. The island’s inhabitants were temporarily evacuated to England after the eruption of 1961 because the island is actually an active volcano that erupted that year near their settlement on the northern part of the island. 🌋
Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is 2816 kilometers from South Africa, where we were headed, and 3360 kilometers from South America, where we had come from. Furthermore, it’s 2400 kilometers away from the nearest inhabited island, officially making this settlement the world’s most remote.
Nearby are a few other islands that also belong to the U.K., which are called Nightingale, Inaccessible, and Gough Islands.
We couldn’t dock at those islands, but we cruised around them on our luxury ship. It was cool to see some great views of Tristan da Cunha and the other islands too. It was fairly rainy and foggy, but we still enjoyed the experience.
Reaching the World’s Most Remote Settlement
On our first day out there, we couldn’t dock at Tristan da Cunha either, which annoyed me because my main motivation for taking this cruise was to step foot on the island. 😒 I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, as we met some other passengers aboard who were making their 13th attempt to finally step foot on the elusive island.
It’s hard to visit the land in Tristan da Cunha because it’s a tiny lone island in the middle of the wild Atlantic Ocean. Even if the wind and weather conditions are near-perfect, like they were when we visited, there may be rough weather somewhere else across the ocean that results in crashing waves here. If the swell is too high, it’s impossible to safely board the zodiac boats to access the island. I think it would have been easily possible for a seasoned sailor like myself to board the smaller boat, but the rules on these big cruise lines are conservative, especially with so many elderly folks on board. We didn’t make it on land that first day, but we had planned to be there for two days, so we still had a chance to make it there.
The conditions on the second day didn’t look much better than they had been the day before, but apparently, they were better because, in the end, we were allowed to board the small boats and we made it to land. 🥳
We had about four or five hours to spend there, so we explored the town and went to visit a local museum, a church, and a hospital.
I took a long walk along the cliffside to the end of the road, where there was a good viewpoint of the volcano’s peak. I hiked up a bit and enjoyed taking in the views. The volcano was massive at 2060 meters, and it takes multiple days to climb, so I didn’t reach anywhere near the summit, but it was still cool to see close up.
The town was nice overall, with pretty scenery and a good museum. Honestly, pretty much everything about the town was fascinating to me. We got to talk a little with the local people, who had some interesting stories to tell.
A No-Gough
We came across some birdwatchers along the trail as we were walking along the road, and apparently, one of the old guys fell and broke his neck and arm, so that was a big emergency. 🚨
The island’s hospital could take him, but we were the last cruise ship of the season, and it would have been three months before another ship could come to get him. So he got back on our ship, and because of that, we had to get back to Cape Town earlier than planned.
We missed out on visiting Gough Island because we had to get the poor man to the hospital as quickly as possible. We had hoped to visit all of the islands out there because they are so remote, but Gough is uninhabited, so we didn’t feel like we were missing out on too much. We were still glad that we had been able to walk around Tristan da Cunha, and that we’d been able to look out at Nightingale and Inaccessible Islands from the ship.
The last few days, we enjoyed our time on the ship and got to know our Ukrainian captains a little better. We spent some time with them on the bridge, as I mentioned in my last installment, and outside of that, we had a great time just relaxing and enjoying the cuisine.
Back on Land
At some point, we finally arrived in Cape Town. Because we had arrived early, we still had another two nights on the ship in Cape Town, so we spent our days exploring the city.
Karyna had never been to Cape Town before, so we took a local tour of the area, which she really enjoyed.
We went up Signal Hill and Table Mountain and did some other touristy things in and around the city. That night, we met up with some of my Staatenlos clients at a villa to hang out and discuss some business issues.
The next day, Karyna’s son, Maximilian, was coming to join us for a road trip. Before we took off, we showed him the still-docked cruise ship that we had just disembarked. He had never been on such a big cruise ship before, so we got to take him on board, where I gave him a private tour of the ship. We met with the captain, who was nice enough to bring Maximilian on the bridge and show him everything. He looked like a little captain at the helm of the big ship, which was a cool experience. 🥰
Then it was time to check out, pick up our baggage, and get our rental car for the road trip ahead. During our visit to South Africa, we stayed at a nice place in the vineyards where we enjoyed drinking tasty wine, exploring the land, and lounging around.
We also took a day trip to Mossel Bay to try to dive with great white sharks…
… But animal sightings are never guaranteed out in the wild, and that day, no shark appeared. Then we flew to Zambia to visit Victoria Falls, but that’s a story for another day.
That’s the short version of a long cruise I took across the ocean with my girlfriend. Overall, we had a great time exploring the places we visited, and we enjoyed great food and drinks on board throughout our trip. I managed to get a decent amount of work done while we traveled, and Karyna was happy to see her son again after a long journey. The cruise ship turned out to be pretty nice, as everything was convenient and comfortable, even though it wasn’t the nicest ship I’ve ever been on. Everything was still relatively good, and we enjoyed our trip.
