Off to another desert island - 11:54 am

25 Jan 2010

It’s been more than a year since Pierre Minnie and I have been on a boat together. Today, setting off for Jutten Island, offshore from Saldanha Bay was rather different to that epic trip we did to the Antarctic Peninsula.

The weather was fairly good in that the sun was out, but the wind was rather strong and it whipped the seas up. Our boat ride in a rubber duck, surrounded by camera gear, groceries and water, was bumpy to the extreme. But we got to the island safely and hauled all our gear to the one liveable house left on the island. There are a number of buildings here – left from the guano collectors who scraped the smelly ammonia mounds from the islands early last century to be exported for use as fertilizer. Times have changed.

Now, the buildings are used only by the birds, except for one half of an old store or dorm, which has all its windows and a light smattering of equipment. It’s rustic for sure.

We won’t be watching DSTV by any means. No pizza delivery either. These trips definitely require some good forward planning.

We should be more than busy. Time to explore and investigate what we can see. There are cormorants nesting absolutely everywhere so our movements may be somewhat limited.  Wherever we go, we’re watched closely by kelp gulls – just in case we disturb a nesting bird and briefly expose an egg to them.

It’s a lot of responsibility. It’s going to take a lot of time to get anywhere.

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