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Falkland Islands

January 26

Wow.  First of all, it dawned on me today upon stepping off the boat onto the Falklands that it wasn’t ever even on my radar to “go visit the Falklands”.  It’s somewhere down there and hell, I never even thought I’d go “down there”!  The big deal on this day was to take a four wheeler out to Volunteer Point where King penguins do their thing – eggs on the feet, the whole deal.  

It’s British doncha know, so our driver, David, was on the right.  Sweet memories of Scotland for me. Al rode shotgun and John, Sue and I were cozy in the back seat of the vintage Land Rover.  David was a character and before it was all over we had covered Harry and Meghan, Trump ( keep my opinions to myself in mixed company), politics in general, the superiority of Land Rovers over Toyotas, why his knee has titanium (not your run of the mill knee replacement, rather a dirt bike incident in his younger days) and more.

The first 45 minutes of the drive were through terrain that looked like Scotland.  I can see why the French took one look and left and the Brits stuck around. It looked like home to them. Rock “glaciers” and rivers of rock (granite?), very very pretty countryside, fat cows, and of course sheep.  I’ve never seen free range sheep run when a car approaches but later in the day when I saw a farmer herding them with his jeep I understood. I need to dig a little deeper into the whole Argentina We Own The Falklands thing, but Sue understood that the Brits arrived long before the Spaniards.  I have no idea. I do know that there are several memorials to those Brits who died defending the island.

We stopped at a farmstead that was the entrance to the road to the penguins.  Using the term road loosely.  There were clean bathrooms and a box called the Bake Safe that held homemade goodies made by the farmer’s wife.  Crazy delicious and only a small donation was asked.  Then the gate was opened and we started the real adventure.  

An hour and a half later my spine was fully readjusted.  There was no road to speak of.  We essentially off-roaded through deep ruts and over bumpy terrain for and hour and a half. I had been warned to not let my head hit the window and I was vigilant, the window rolled down and holding on to the frame the whole time.  Sue and I passed the time talking about raising kids, retirement, blah blah blah and of course the David conversation noted above.  It really wasn’t as bad as it might sound and the scenery was so lovely, wide open spaces with hills in the distance.  We were getting the true Falklands experience.  Having said that, the ride seemed interminable because of those wide open spaces.  “See those little buildings? That’s where we’re going”.   They were pretty far in the distance and I’ve been on the planet long enough to know that getting to them was going to take longer than it looked like it would take.

Get there we did and first hopped out of the truck to dip our feet in the pool of antiseptic that is required before entering the penguin area to avoid bringing any evils bugs into the grounds (we also were forbidden to bring ANY food of ANY kind off the ship). Then we walked to the penguins and were told we had  

When I sent my family photos of Antarctica, Andy commented “That’s real National Geographic shit…”.  Well, the king penguins were even more so.  There were wardens to make sure people didn’t get too close but too close was anything closer than about 10 ft.  The penguins were Right. There.  The kings’ breeding on the Falklands is not relegated to a season so we were able to see all stages of it. Parents with the eggs on the feet, chicks with their butts sticking out from under the feathery apron and their heads tucked underneath. Chicks that had decided it was safe to come out and were looking around trying to figure out what all the fuss was about. Larger juveniles looking like brown fluff balls, then some further along in the process and molting.  The sun came out for us and the bright white of their bellies and yellow and orange and black head and neck feathers, and gray back feathers just glowed.  

There IS a constant fuss.  Constant squawking and crowing and fighting (don’t mess with a parent who is guarding its babe).  I vaguely remember from penguin documentaries that if a chick dies or gets lost the parent will run around looking for it or try to steal another’s chick.  Seemed like there was a lot of that kind of chaos going on here and there.  

Intermixed with all this were magellanic penguin burrows and lots of sheep.  We walked over a large hill to the ocean, following some waddling kings – so funny looking – where they appeared to be discussing the wisdom of going in to the cold water.  Finally they did, swam around looking all the world like ducks until they came out again and stood up. The beach sand was as white as could be and and fine as flour and the spit of land at the end of the beach, the sun on the water accentuating the blue – it was just all too much. 

We had a bag lunch in the car, washed our feet off again and headed home.  Somehow that bumpy ride seemed longer on the way back but of course it wasn’t and before we knew it we were back at the Bake Safe and the bathrooms and back to port.  We had a little time to walk around the town of Port Stanley, but I really needed a baseball cap and lo and behold there was also some Falkland yarn in the same shop.  We found our hand painted souvenir Christmas ornament – two penguins doing the king penguin kiss thing with a little chick.  It’s really just a little figurine but because the beaks are touching we can attach a ribbon and voila, an ornament.  

Back on the ship now, sail away was beautiful – we had arrived before we woke up so we didn’t get to really see the beauty from a distance. 

It never occurred to me to visit the Falklands.  So glad that surprise was part of this trip.

Tomorrow is a day at sea and we will use that time to pack away our cold weather clothes and pull the shorts back out, as expected temperature at our next port is 85 degrees!

PS It is the next morning.  I’m sitting on the balcony and the seas are calm and the air is warmer again. Slept okay but I’m really tired and the only thing that hurts is my left biceps from holding on to the window ledge on the car door.  Also, my fit bit logged 22,000 steps yesterday and I can only account for maybe 2000 being actual steps.  So that comes to around 20,000 bumpity bumps.  It was worth it.  Yes. It was.