The most isolated capital in the world

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After a light lunch on board, we went into Stanley for a wander around the neat, colourful small town of about 2,000 with its pub, churches, civic buildings and four terraced town houses that could have been transported brick by brick from Victorian England - apart from the green corrugated roof rather than tiles. The morning cloud had blown away and it was a beautiful sunny afternoon.

We were told there had been a fair bit of damage in yesterday’s storm but we saw not a sign of this - frankly it was a tribute to the quality of construction that half the homes weren’t completely flattened. I suspect that the buildings here are pretty well put together given that a fresh wind apparently blows most days of the year- you could see, for example, that the rivets holding down the ubiquitous corrugated roofs were spaced conservatively every few centimetres. Our morning guide, however, aged about sixty and born and bred in Stanley, said she had never before experienced winds like it in the town. Which set Sunday’s storm very clearly in perspective.

Back at Minerva in the late afternoon we relaxed before pulling away from Port Stanley for South Georgia, about 750 nautical miles away. We were warned there would be some considerable swell left over from the storm, making life a little uncomfortable. And indeed there was; Lisa retired to bed early to avoid her almost inevitable queasiness, although the Stugeron certainly seemed to be helping her.Next ➤ ➤

Howard's Antarctica Galleries at PBase

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