Penguin Diaries: Day 98: Penguins and parties

Saturday 16th February

Wow I can't believe I'm into my last week.... It's flown... anyway, don't want to dwel on that right now!

So, back to today! The past few days I have been working on the forecasting side. It's a lot busier than the observing side of the office, so appologies for not being "around" as much on here or on facebook lately. I really enjoyed forecasting actually, and would be quite keen to come back here in the future to do longer than just a week and a bit doing that job!!

So Saturday was my sleep day, and Katie was off too. She's been here a week but due to weather and fires on the west Island hasn't been out on a heli trip yet. It seems I have been very very lucky that I have been to all of the places that I wanted to visit in my three month tour. I had put mine and Katie's names down to go to Bleaker Island today, and luckily it came off! Bleaker Island is to the south of MPA, just before you get to Sealion Island. My very own forecast of fair weather cu had come off - it was bright and sunny. The wind was however quite a bit stronger than I had forecast (I'd gone for 15-18 KT and it was more like 25-30 KT. Oops). But never mind!

Kaite and me were boh coming off night shifts, but the excitment of penguins and a hogie (like a subway!) were enough to keep us awake!! We arrived at around 11.15 and were met by Elaine, the owner of the island, who had made tea and cakes for us. Lovely!

We had until 3.15 to look around, and there were a couple of different "hot spots" to cover, so we quickly got on our way, in search of rockhopper penguins. We walked forward in a straight line, and came to a group of cormorants. There were loads of them, and also loads of dead animal carcasses on the ground. Spooky. One bird seemingly took a swoop at us, but I think he maybe didn;'t see us as they are generally quite friendly, and we weren't that close. They absolutely stunk, so we kept going! We came to the sea, and noticed that the rockhoppers were actually a little bit to the right so we set off following the coast line. We were blocked by a huge mass of tussuck plants. We though we would be able to get through it quite easily if we kept to the coast line, however it got was quite 'cliffy' after a while so we were faced with no choice than to walk through the now neck high, thick tussock plants. Ooops. I don't think Elaine would have been too happy with us. Of course, we were as carfeul as we could and tried to take the quickest route out towards the land rather than towards the rockhoppers. We lept getting lost, and even when we got out and headed to where the path to the rockhoppers were we still got lost in the middle of a tussuck jungle!!

We found the rockhoppers in the end, and they were very cute. They were a lot more docile than the ones on Sealion Island, and we didnt' see them do too much hopping. But it was nice anyway!

We then went off in search of Sandy Bay, which was again another beautiful white sandy beach. There were Gentoos there, which are Katie's favourites, so that was good. The water was really clear.

We set off back towards the settlement, and managed to get a bit lost and ended up walking prety much the whole stretch of the island!! Oh well! We made it back just in time for a cup of tea and a bit more cake. Yay! I managed to fall asleep on the 15 minute flight back to MPA... zzz!!

Just enough time to have an hours sleep before getting ready for the fancy dress BBQ in the officer's mess! I of course went as a penguin, and James gave his penguin onesie to Katie to wear, as he didn't want to look like a couple's fancy dress. Katie wore a crown and went as a King Penguin, and I made a necklace out of pasta so was a Macaroni Penguin. Yay! Everyone was in a bit of a buzz, and it was a really good fun night. Yayyy!