Falkland Islands

Our first day we tried to land at Seal Beach. The weather turned us away and really impeded our progress to dock at Port Stanley. Although we started the day at 7:00a with the failed landing attempt, we didn't get off the ship in Stanley until 3:30p. There, Montana Short was waiting with a bus to give us a quick tour of the area around Stanley.

2000 people call the Falkland Islands home. Most of them live in Stanley, the only city on the Islands (which are the approximate size of Wales). I'll bet it wouldn't take you an hour to walk the entire perimeter. Another 2000 British military personel make their temporary homes on the island, mostly about 30 minutes away. Any drive around the Falklands will take you near fenced-off minefields left over from the 1982 occupation by Argentina. Even though they lost that war all that time ago the Argentines still fiercely claim the Islands are theirs, and the island inhabitants still love to talk to tourists about the war that lasted 11 weeks. I guess it's not everyday (thankfully) that you meet a war victim.

Anyway, Montana took us to the nearby residence of the Magellanic, or jackass (so named for their donkey-like calls) penguins. These were the only penguins that live in burrows in the ground. When the parents go to sea in search of food, they round up all the youngsters and hide them all in the same spot in the grass. The juveniles huddle closer and closer together if approached by anything they think is dangerous. These penguins seemed the most fearful of humans out of all the species we met on our trip.

Montana showed us around the town, we stopped at the museum, and then headed back to the ship for our final night aboard. In honor of the occasion, I brought out my traveling electric guitar to play for anyone who would listen to me in the bar. The next day we had to be off the ship by 8:00a. Yikes.

We got off the ship the next morning and proceeded to look for a place to stay. On the entire trip we never made advance reservations to stay anywhere. But on the Falklands, everything was full. Go figure. The tourist office helped us by calling the people on their list of "emergency housing" until the last one on the list had an opening. Whew!

The next day we visited Goose Green, a mostly-abandoned farm complex that was finishing up its sheep-shearing activities for the season. We also saw a cemetery in which over 450 Argentine soldiers were buried.

The day after that we rented a Land Rover and a driver to take us to see the king penguins. Wow, they were spectacular! What a busy, noisy colony. The kings were taller than all the other penguins we had seen so far. It was also interesting to note that their babies were in all sorts of different stages of development, most of which looked like they were freshly-hatched as opposed to the chinstraps and gentoos whose offspring were the same height as the parents and quickly losing their fledgling feathers.

This king penguin colony had been slowly and steadily growing over the years. They set up shop on the property of a local farmer who charged everyone 10 pounds to see them. An ordinary fence marked the edge of the farmer's property and we found 4 unfortunate kings come out of the water on the wrong side of the fence. The poor guys would walk along the fence, turn and look in dismay at everyone else on the other side, then walk a little further. The only way for them to get to the other side was to go back into the ocean. We didn't have that kind of time to wait for them.

The area was windy and quite green. There were feathers all over the place. Skuas patrolled the area, just like they did on all the other penguin colonies. Sheep and horses roamed the same area as the penguins. It was strange to see the three types of animals together.

We spent over an hour watching the kings do their penguin thing. Then we rode the Land Rover for 3 hours back home. It was a long (and pricey) drive, but definitely worth the ride.