Icy sprays of water hit my face as Cameron, our Zodiac driver, zips across the frigid sea toward the shore of St. Andrews Bay on the subantarctic island of South Georgia, in the southern Atlantic Ocean about 1,700 miles (2,735 km) east of Argentina’s southernmost tip. Bundled up in our red rain and wind gear, 10 of us clutch the ropes on the sides of our Zodiac (a motorized inflatable boat) as we head toward shore.

Our ship, the Akademik Sergey Vavilov/Peregrine Voyager, a Russian research vessel transformed into a 100-passenger ship with a strengthened hull adapted to ice breaking for its journeys to Antarctica, waits for us in a sheltered harbor.

“Check out our greeting party,” our driver says, pointing ahead. “I’ll get us around the seals in the water, but watch out; the male teenage fur seals tend to be grouchy. If they hassle you, clap your hands and they’ll move.”

About half of the world’s southern elephant seals flock to the beaches of South Georgia Island during the austral summer.

Through misty sprays of water, I see densely packed humps of dark-brown boulders cluttering the shoreline. As we get closer, I realize the boulders are southern fur and southern elephant seals, hundreds and hundreds of them.

Groups of seals lounge on the sand belching loudly and tossing sand with their flippers; others sun themselves on rocks jutting from the water, while others swagger about, sentinels guarding their harems.

We land on a gray-black, sandy beach under the watchful eyes of the seals. A welcoming committee of about 200 king penguins struts over to us. We’re surrounded by three-foot-tall (1 m), white-breasted, orangey-gold throated, black-and-gold headed penguins.

Three of the penguins follow me as I negotiate around bull elephant seals as large as a car. The seals eye me warily with watery, bloodshot eyes when my penguin groupies and I go by.

It’s good to be on land again after spending two days crossing the Antarctic Convergence from the Falkland Islands. The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans meet, mix and merge in the Southern Ocean, the circumpolar sea that isolates Antarctica from the other continents.

South Georgia Island shines in the Southern Ocean like crystal, its ice fields and glaciers tumbling into valleys below two mountain ranges, Allardyce and Salvesen. Permanent snow and ice blanket much of the island. Steep, jagged cliffs and small, rocky islands dot the coast. There are no roads or airports here. The only way to get to South Georgia Island is by sea, and that can be a treacherous journey, as many early explorers discovered.

I’m here in late January, during austral, or southern, summer, a season that starts in November and ends in late February or early March. The sun finally emerges from the long winter night, the sea ice melts, and the breeding season begins. Streaks of gold and pink fire up the sky, creating pastel swirls that filter into my cabin at 3:30 in the morning and at night as late as 11:30.