Country's codes
International phone code for South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands: +500
3 letters: SGS
2 letters (internet domain): .GS
Digital country code: 239
Standard EAN-13 (country barcode): N/A
Olympic country code: N/A (British Overseas Territory)
🇬🇸 South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands Travel Guide
Described as the Galápagos of the Southern Ocean, South Georgia offers one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on the planet — king penguin colonies of half a million birds, beaches heaving with elephant seals and fur seals, albatrosses wheeling overhead, and humpback whales breaching in glacier-fed fjords. Combined with its extraordinary history of polar exploration and whaling, a voyage to South Georgia is a genuinely life-changing experience that ranks among the most extraordinary journeys possible on Earth.
Top Attractions in South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands
🐧 St. Andrews Bay — King Penguin Capital of the World
Home to the largest king penguin colony on Earth — an estimated 150,000 breeding pairs alongside thousands of elephant seals — St. Andrews Bay is one of the most overwhelming and humbling wildlife encounters available anywhere on the planet. Standing among this vast living carpet of birds is an experience impossible to forget.
⚓ Grytviken — Shackleton's Grave & Whaling Station
The only settlement in the territory and the spiritual heart of South Georgia — a hauntingly atmospheric former whaling station where the legendary Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton is buried, a small Norwegian church erected by whalers in 1913 still stands, and a remarkable museum chronicles the island's extraordinary history of exploration, sealing, and whaling.
🌊 Drygalski Fjord & The Allardyce Range
A jaw-dropping landscape of sheer glaciated peaks, calving glaciers, and narrow sea inlets — where Weddell seals haul out on ice floes, seabirds fill the sky, and the scale of South Georgia's wild mountain interior becomes strikingly apparent. Mount Paget, at 2,934 metres, towers over one of the most dramatic sub-Antarctic seascapes on Earth.
🌋 Zavodovski Island — South Sandwich Islands
One of the most extraordinary and least-visited places on the planet — an active smoking volcano in the South Sandwich Islands that is home to the world's largest chinstrap penguin colony, with an estimated 1.5 million birds. The persistent plume of volcanic gases swirls with clouds into the Southern Ocean sky in a scene of primordial, otherworldly drama.
Best Places to Visit
- 🏔️ Salisbury Plain – The second-largest king penguin colony on the island, set against a sweeping glacial plain — a gentler landing site but no less magnificent in scale or spectacle.
- 🦭 Gold Harbour – A spectacular amphitheatre of peaks and glaciers forming a backdrop to one of the densest concentrations of king penguins, elephant seals, and wandering albatrosses on the island.
- 🐦 Bird Island – Home to a British Antarctic Survey research station and one of the most important seabird breeding sites in the world — vast colonies of black-browed albatrosses, macaroni penguins, and fur seals.
- 🏚️ Stromness Harbour – The dramatic former whaling station where Shackleton and his exhausted crew stumbled in from their impossible crossing of the island's interior in 1916 — one of history's greatest survival stories played out right here.
- 🌊 Fortuna Bay & Hercules Bay – Sheltered bays offering stunning Zodiac cruising among glaciers, king penguins, fur seals, and the chance to spot humpback and minke whales just offshore.
Things to Do in South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands
- Stand among hundreds of thousands of king penguins at St. Andrews Bay or Salisbury Plain — one of the greatest wildlife encounters on Earth.
- Visit Grytviken, pay your respects at Shackleton's grave with the traditional toast of whisky, and explore the evocative whaling station museum.
- Zodiac cruise through iceberg-strewn fjords — watching humpback whales, orca, and vast rafts of penguins from the water's surface.
- Walk the final stretch of Shackleton's legendary crossing route from Fortuna Bay to Stromness, retracing the steps of polar history's greatest survival feat.
- Collect the official South Georgia government passport stamp at Grytviken — a prized souvenir from one of the most remote and remarkable places on Earth.
Travel Tips for Visitors
- 🚢 Access is exclusively by expedition cruise ship — no airstrips exist anywhere in the territory. Most itineraries depart from Ushuaia, Argentina, with the crossing taking 2–3 days each way across the Drake Passage or South Atlantic.
- 🧤 Layered, waterproof, windproof clothing is essential — temperatures range from -10°C in winter to a maximum of around 8°C in summer, and conditions can change in minutes.
- 🦠 Strict biosecurity measures apply to every shore landing — all boots, bags, and outer clothing must be thoroughly cleaned and inspected between sites to prevent the spread of invasive species.
- 📋 A Regulated Activity Permit (RAP) is required for most shore activities beyond standard tourism landings — apply well in advance through the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (GSGSSI).
📌 Useful Country Information
Quick Facts
Total area: 1,507 sq mi (3,903 sq km)
Population: No permanent civilian residents; a small rotating staff of British Antarctic Survey scientists and government officers reside at Grytviken during the summer months only
Capital / Administrative centre: King Edward Point, South Georgia (government also administered from Stanley, Falkland Islands)
🇬🇸 King Edward Point: Administrative Centre Profile
Main islands/groups: South Georgia Island, South Sandwich Islands (Zavodovski, Visokoi, Candlemas, Saunders, Montagu, Bristol, Southern Thule), Shag Rocks
Currency: Pound Sterling (GBP) / Falkland Islands Pound (FKP)
National name: South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (SGSSI) — British Overseas Territory
Language: English (only language spoken by rotating scientific and government staff)
Ethnicity/race: No permanent civilian population; rotating staff are predominantly British nationals working for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (GSGSSI)
Religions: No established religious community; the Norwegian-built Grytviken Lutheran Church (1913) still stands and is open to visitors — one of the most remote churches in the world
National Holiday: September 4, Toothfish Day (celebrating the sustainable Patagonian toothfish fishery — the territory's primary economic activity); June 10, Queen's / King's Birthday (as a British Overseas Territory).
Background
🐳 South Georgia's modern history is defined by the brutal but economically transformative era of sealing and whaling. From the late 18th century, sealers decimated elephant and fur seal populations for their oil and pelts. Whaling followed on an industrial scale from 1904, when Norwegian captain Carl Anton Larsen established the world's first land-based whaling station at Grytviken. At its peak, South Georgia was one of the most important industrial sites on Earth — seven whaling stations operated simultaneously. The last station closed in 1965, leaving behind haunting ruins that still dot the coastline.
🏔️ The islands are forever associated with one of history's greatest survival stories. In 1916, following the loss of his ship Endurance in the Weddell Sea ice, explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton led a desperate open-boat voyage of 1,300 km to South Georgia in the James Caird, then made the first-ever crossing of the island's interior mountains on foot to reach help at Stromness. All 28 men of his crew survived. Shackleton died on a return expedition in 1922 and was buried at Grytviken at the request of his wife — his grave remains the most visited and most emotionally charged site in the territory.
🌿 Today SGSSI is governed as a conservation sanctuary of global importance. The surrounding waters form one of the world's largest Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), covering approximately 1.07 million km². A landmark rodent eradication programme — one of the largest ever attempted — was completed in 2015, removing rats and mice that had devastated ground-nesting seabird populations for over 200 years. The results have been transformational: seabird species are returning and nesting on South Georgia for the first time in living memory, in one of conservation's greatest modern success stories.
