Friday Oct 17, 2014 Afternoon

We arrive at Elephant Island. The first sight is impressive, but more so because of everything we have read and heard about it… steep icy rock cliffs hidden in the haze reveal themselves as we approach. We decide to go to the southern part of the island as it is already mid afternoon. This is where we will anchor for the night. We will then try to go to Point Wild tomorrow: this is where Shackleton and five of his men left from on the James Caird lifeboat with the hope of reaching South Georgia.
At 4pm we reach point Lookout, our anchorage for the night. We get a zodiac out and we go onshore. There we are (sort of) welcomed by a colony of several hundreds gentoo penguins and several fur seals. Zoe takes samples of snow in a virgin slope (these samples are then brought back to her lab in France for micro nutriments analysis). We film all this and then Bertrand (cameraman) goes with Geraldine up the glacier for a test snowboard ride. When all done we return to the warmth of the Australis.

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