The Falklands

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Thursday 19^th January 2012

Yes I know its Thursday because the mat in the lift says so. It’s also a sea day, which means we do not see anything but sea! We are on our way to Puerto Madryn on the Argentinian coast. Each cabinet has TV and the best channel is the one that shows the Captain’s view ahead plus the navigational details plus maps. We are now 47 degrees south so have come a long way from Antarctica. The sea is relatively calm and has been for the past 2 days, which meant that yesterday we were able to dock at Port Stanley in The Falklands. It was a glorious sunny day – it seems that the Falklands have had an unusually good summer. Brian had a visit with the medics to the hospital there and I did a 3-hour hike with a botanist and bird guide. There were only 8 of us of the 1500 on board plus 2 crew-members so the “strenuous” as described was enough to put them all off. In the event it was a long walk but not too difficult over a headland overlooking Stanley and down onto two beaches. Two more were inaccessible because of land mines still in place. This is an Island very much still on the alert. We walked over rugged but rich terrain with lots of bird life – we were up close and personal with the Megellan penguins in their burrows and on the beaches. No trees on the Falklands except in Port Stanley – it’s the wind, which was hardly believable on the day we visited.



Brian and I met up for a pint and fish and chips paid for with pounds sterling. Then we visited the church and strolled around in the sunshine. He has been to the war memorial and the museum, which was excellent apparently. The Falklands are a set of Islands – two very large and many small ones. Together they are much bigger then we imagine – about the size of Ireland I would say.

The community is fiercely British and it feels like a Scottish Island but without the Scottish accent. They are having trouble again with Argentina and cannot now get supplies from there. Instead are being supplied from UK. The bottle of water I was given for my hike came from Waitrose!

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