Berthelot Island

Today we went to our most southern point of the scheduled trip being Berthelot Island. It’s not a place frequently visited and one of the various places on this trip that doesn’t exist in the Lonely Planet guide. It was rather amusing; it was the warmest and clearest day of the trip at a point where you would expect it to be the complete opposite. On this island we meet a new breed of penguins called the Adélie. They were full of personality, it was easy to anthromorphise them. The first one to come over Seth called out “Get off my lawn!” it fit perfectly with the demeanor of this little character. There were another group that were climbing a hill, almost like they were saying “Sound the alarm! Sound the alarm!”. Once they realized we weren’t a threat, they put on a show in the water for us. It wasn’t quite the Fort Point ballet troupe, more the Berthelot Island swim squad, but it was beautiful to watch. We saw around seven penguins jump off the island the same time together rather gracefully, along with a lot of belly sliding to get around. They definitely have different personalities to the Chinstrap and Gentoo. The island itself was surrounded by ice and icebergs. It was a beautiful sight that’s completely indescribable unless you are there. I’m not even sure the photos we took could do it justice. Either way, the point we got to was 65 degrees south. I’m not sure we could have gone any further than that, you could see the barricade of icebergs further south from the island. It was a nice point to turn around.