Blogs from Falkland Islands, South America - page 4

Fri 4th Feb Port Stanley, Falkland Islands Sparrow Cove penguin experience Like many other people i think, until Maggie’s involvement in defending these islands from the Argentinean invasion, I had never heard of Port Stanley. Murdo of course knew about this region due to his fathers tales of his whaling trips to Antarctica. So for different reasons we both were looking forward to our stay today. A tender boat took us over to the island to commence our excursion to see a colony of gentoo penguins. Having stepped onto the island, we felt like we were back home !!! The similarity of the terrain to the Scottish highlands was uncanny with it's small farms nestling amongst wild backdrops of rocks, heather and peaty ground. As we walked our feet sprang in a comfy familiar way. It ... read more

What can we say about the Falklands? The pictures are the real highlight. We flew in from Punta Arenas in Chile on Dec 19th and were picked up at Mount Pleasant airport (a military airport where you aren’t allowed to take photos) by Ken who drove us to Darwin house where we spent our first night. This was our first experience with Falkland island roads, which are mostly gravel and very dusty. The landscape was absolutely windswept with no trees in sight except around the settlements. As you can see from the photos, there are gorse, Diddly dee, tussock grass and sheep as far as the eye can see! After meeting the people who were also doing a week-long tour and our hostess Sheena, we had a quick cup of tea and set out to explore ... read more

The Falkland Islands is not a place you can drive to for the weekend. It is located about 300 miles from the nearest South American coast. The island came to international attention when Argentine invaded the island in 1982. A British expeditionary force lander some seven weeks later and after much fighting Argentine surrendered June 14, 1982. There are remnants of the fighting on the island and one of the areas, Bluff Cove, that we visited had warning signs that unexplored ordnance might be present. A notice was posted late in 2009 that a British firm had been hired to clear mines in the area. We arrived at Stanley via a cruise ship which is the most predominate methods of getting to Stanley although there is an airport on the Falkland Islands. We had attempted to ... read more

We have arrived back in Ushuaia where the temperature has reached the tropical heights of 9C , this is high summer here - one month ago, when we were skinny dipping, it was 2C. We are back here to meet with up with Dave & Di and board the Professor Multanovskiy, a small Russian ice-strengthened ship, that will be our home for the next 19 days. The first task after we board our ship and pull away from Ushuaia is the Safety Drill, which involves us all donning our life vests and cramming into the 2 life boats, its very snug and that's without the crew in there with us - its a good ice-braking exercise (no pun intended!!). That over we can retire to the bar to meet our fellow passengers. Out of 49 passengers ... read more

Saunders Island... read more