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By Nigel Sitwell
Antarctica is one of the world's most exciting and unspoiled wilderness areas, with a range of memorable places to visit. But my favorite site is not in Antarctica itself but on the coast of South Georgia. This large island is north of 60 degrees South, and thus outside the political realm of the Antarctic Treaty, but it does lie within the biological realm encompassed by the Antarctic Convergence.
South Georgia is blessed with majestic scenery and a surprising variety of wildlife and plants. My chosen spot is the Bay of Isles, where one encounters abundant fur seals and elephant seals, as well as birds such as brown skuas and South Georgia pintails. But the main attraction is the truly awesome sight of tens of thousands of king penguins (Bernard Stonehouse reckons there are more than 30,000 pairs) on Salisbury Plain. Here you will find a mixed congregation of colourful adults and their fluffy brown chicks.
It is one of nature's unforgettable spectacles – in the same league as the massed flamingos of Lake Nakuru, the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti, and the great caribou herds of arctic Canada. I like to climb the hillside above the main rookery; in order to experience the full extent of this extraordinary ornithological gathering. By way of icing on the cake, most visitors also go ashore on one of the nearby islets, where it's possible to have close-up views of giant petrels and the fabled wandering albatross. With luck you may see the endemic South Georgia pipit.
Nigel Sitwell is a writer/editor specialising in natural history and travel. He has been leading tourist expeditions to Antarctica since 1987, and has often been asked for suggestions about maps of the area. Eventually he decided to produce one himself.
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Nigel Sitwell
Antarctic Explorer Map
MAP •
2000 • BEST SELLER •
HARD TO FIND • NEW
A full color map of the Antarctic Peninsula at a scale of 7:000,000 designed for the shipboard traveler by veteran expedition leader Nigel Sitwell. It covers the range of most Antarctic voyages from Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Peninsula south to Marguerite Bay. It also includes detailed insets of South Georgia and the complex channels and islands of the Palmer Archipelago including Paradise Bay, the Lemaire and Neumeyer channels. The reverse shows the entire continent with photographs and mini-biographies of 30 polar explorers. (ANT128, $11.95)
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