March 15 - Afternoon; Grytviken

When everybody was back on board from Fortuna Bay, the ship sailed southeast back down the coast to Grytviken for the final stop of the cruise before heading back to Uruguay.  

Although the old whaling station has been abandoned since the mid-1960s, there are some administrative offices in modern buildings at the entrance to the bay, as well as a post office, museum and the only public bathroom we’ve seen since Ushuaia.  Most significantly (for me), just down the beach, there’s a small cemetery containing the grave of Sir Ernest Shackleton.

The Zodiac landing spot was to the left of the remains of the town, at the bottom of a long, muddy walkway leading up to the cemetery, so that was the first stop upon getting off the ship.

Walking up to the Cemetery

An apt, but modest resting spot
for such an illustrious explorer

At Shackleton’s Grave

View of Grytviken from in front of the cemetery

Another view from in front of the cemetery

The town, if you could call it that, consisted of a lot of rusting storage tanks, sheds and equipment lying around, the whole place having been taken over by seals (but no penguins).  Farther on there was a small post office and gift shop. From here I purchased (using Apple Pay, which worked great even here!) a postcard and mailed it to my parents back in New Orleans (p.s. it arrived in NOLA something like 2 months later!!). There was also an interesting museum all about the history of the island and with a room dedicated to Shackleton.   Behind the buildings, set off by itself, was the old church, which was open for us to walk into and look around.

After we had seen everything there was to see and do here, it was time for our last Zodiac ride back to the ship, which sailed at 5:00 pm towards Montevideo.  There followed a very long evening of cocktails with new friends, a long dinner, and then more drinks and conversation until around 1:00 am.  For the first time, there’s nothing on the agenda for the next four days at sea, other than sleeping late, a series of lectures, and increasingly warm weather as we head north.