We had lunch on Minerva as she re-positioned to Maiviken Bay. From here it was a five-kilometre walk to Grytviken, site of South Georgia’s first and most famous whaling station in the island’s best-protected harbour, King Edward Cove. Expedition Director Lou Sanson had wanted to do this walk for ten years, but until today the conditions had never been right. Those of us making the walk were dropped off, while the ship made her way around by sea.

We began by wading up a stream policed by highly aggressive young male Fur Seals who would bark suddenly and lunge out at us from behind tufts of tussock grass. While most seals ignore humans just as they do most other species, Fur Seals for some reason consider humans to be a territorial threat. Evasive action involves banging rocks together and waving ones arms to deter them from attacking – and at all costs not turning one’s back on them. Beyond the stream we skirted an attractive lake before attacking the first climb up a steep rock-strewn incline. The fairly arduous walk took us up and down across streams, around lakes, through bogs and some more steep inclines, finally cresting a 200-metre pass and then down into Grytviken where the ruins of South Georgia’s main whaling station sit at the end of an enclosed harbour.

Although visiting abandoned human habitations was not what I had come to this part of the world to see, I must say that Grytviken was a very attractive spot – particularly approaching it overland. It nestles beautifully in King Edward Cove, and the old rusting machinery and wrecks glow richly in the late afternoon light. Ernest Shackleton died here in 1922, six years after his epic voyage from the Antarctic ice to South Georgia, and he is buried in a simple cemetery just outside the development.