Falklands & South Georgia.
I’ve recently returned from a sensational wildlife trip to the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. It's hard to convey the majesty and spectacle of South Georgia. Framed by snow covered mountains and glaciers, the shoreline is teeming with millions of penguins and thousands of elephant and fur seals.
For my overseas tours I usually partner with Wildlife Worldwide. For this flagship Festival of Wildlife, our team included TV presenter Mark Carwardine, painter Jonathan Truss and photographers Nick Garbutt and Sean Weekly.
A Festival of Wildlife
We set sail from Punta Arenas to the Falkland Islands in our chartered Magellan Explorer with 75 guests. This year’s Festival of Wildlife proved in many ways to be the most exciting and immersive yet.
For the next few weeks, we ran a varied programme of animal sculpture, painting and photography, including lectures, presentations and workshops, both on board ship and during landings. It was an incredible experience and truly the trip of a lifetime.
The Falkland Islanders welcomed us warmly. They took a real pleasure in sharing the natural beauty and rich wildlife of their home. After showing us the Islands’ wealth of seabirds, they even treated us to afternoon tea. And the capital, Stanley, with its red post boxes, felt quaintly British. From here we headed for South Georgia.
Of course, you can’t visit this part of the world without encountering that most iconic of Antarctic species, the penguin. We landed on the beach with the largest King penguin colony in the world. More than half a million of them. Nothing can quite prepare you for the astonishing scale of this incredible spectacle.
But even more remarkable is the way the penguins behave around people. Due to the strict conservation measures in place, the wildlife does not fear humans as in so many other parts of the world. Almost as soon as you make landfall, you find yourself walking among penguins. While I was standing there fighting back the tears, they were simply waddling around, getting on with their everyday business.
At the time of our visit, many of the penguins were going through their three-week cycle of catastrophic moult. There is nothing to be done but wait for the new feathers to come through, making them once again waterproof. Among this massive throng of adults, thousands of fluffy chicks moped about begging for food from their parents.
As well as getting to know the penguins, we visited a black-browed Albatross colony interspersed with rockhoppers. Just as the sheer number of penguins on the beaches had overwhelmed us, the scale of the rookery was breath-taking. All around us, albatross were flying overhead or reinforcing their bond with graceful displays of head bobbing and preening.
Of all the animals we would encounter, the elephant seal was the animal I was most excited to meet. They are, as their name implies, simply enormous. The large bulls are as much as 20 feet or 3.5 metres long and can weigh up to 5 tonnes. It was the breeding season and there was a constant battle between rival males to claim the beach. These fierce gladiatorial battles provided a breathtaking spectacle.
During our 17-day trip I ran six animal sculpture workshops with 42 of our guests. We sculpted seals and penguins. The seals are full of personality and strike all kinds of interesting poses, making them great subjects for animal sculpture. Penguins are harder than you might think to sculpt. Their simple, streamlined bodies must be carefully refined to achieve the correct clean, smooth profile.
Between workshops and landings, I was kept busy sculpting a small female elephant seal, resting in their classic banana pose, for the charity auction held at the end of our trip in aid of Falklands Conservation. My seal sculpture and preparatory sketch raised £1850. However, the expedition sea chart, decorated by all the artists (I drew the seal top right) and to be signed by Sir David Attenborough, sold for a staggering £26,000, raising an overall sum of £42,000.
Join me for the trip of a lifetime
I run art safari workshops in Zambia and around the world through Wildlife Worldwide. We still have availability if you’re interested in joining us for the trip of a lifetime.
You can find more information on the Wildlife Worldwide website.
