Wow – another great day! This was our first landing on the Falkland Islands. Where on earth are the Falklands you ask? About 300 miles east of Argentina, waaaay out in the Atlantic Ocean.
There are two parts to the blog – the first is about the Falklands, as well as the war that took place in 1982, and the other is the penguins. The many, many, countless penguins!!! So while the war info is we think good, skip down to the TL;DR section to get to the pictures.
Today’s excursion was a landing at Stanley where we would take a 4×4 off-road drive to Volunteer Point, the home of King and Gentoo penguins.
Stanley is a small quaint British town, that feels very slow paced.
Being a small village, there was no dock for the ship, so we had to tender over to the smaller docks that they did have. As we got closer, and saw the welcoming committee of 4 seals and 2 birds that just couldn’t really care at the end of one of the smaller docks, we realized, yes, Stanley is a quaint folksy place indeed perhaps reminiscent of Mayberry.
Not knowing exactly what type of jeep vehicle we would be in, we were pleasantly surprised to see multiple Land Rovers and other similar vehicles lined up. We were in this Defender.
The drive to Volunteer Point is 45 miles and takes 2.5 hours. That doesn’t seem quite right, right?! We’ll explain the timing in a bit.
Our driver, Paul, is a native of the Falklands. The Falklands are under British rule and the citizens consider themselves “British Falkland Islanders”. Paul was 10 years old in April 1982 when the Argentines decided they should own the Falklands as they could make life better for the Islanders.
We asked Paul for any details he cared to share considering he lived through a war. The first thing out of his mouth was so casual but shocking to us – he and his family were held captive for 29 days, part of 115 people who the Argentines thought were helping the British military by allowing them to land on their farmlands.
Paraphrasing, but it went like this “Yeah, there were 115 held in the community center. We had two toilets for the entire group. We slept on the hard floor for those 29 nights”. And then he continued talking about the war. Wow – a captive of war on a teeny island nation at the age of 10?! Unfathomable to us.
As we said, part of Argentina’s reason for capturing the Falklands is that they could make life better. However, during their invasion, they did just the opposite. Paul said they defecated everywhere intentionally – bathrooms, kitchen counters, furniture in people’s homes, the public library, etc. The library was in such crappy condition (yes, tacky pun intended…sorry) that they had to use fire hoses to clear out the entire library.
They also left grenades in people’s home, basically with a dead man’s switch. The grenade was placed in between books on a bookshelf, under a chair, etc., with the pin pulled out, ready to detonate as soon as a book was moved, chair pulled out, etc. When it was determined that people could return to their homes, the British military had to do a sweep of each home to safely remove any grenades and/or booby traps.
Despite defeat, Argentina made another attempt at taking the Falklands. They declared that the Islanders were being held captive by the Brits, therefore becoming part of Argentina would free the citizens. The British Falkland Islanders took it to vote and 99.8% of citizens determined it was NOT in their best interest to become Argentines.
They’re confident there was no tampering with the votes as the votes were overseen/counted by seven individuals from countries that have no stake to claim. And, as Paul said comically, “We still haven’t found that .2%”.
As we drove toward Volunteer Point, he pointed out remnants of two crashed Argentine helicopters that were remnants of the war, also pointing out where the British military swept and cleared land mines. Again, unfathomable to us. Aside from Paul’s stories, the helicopters, and mine swept areas that weren’t obvious, we saw no signs of the war.
TL:DR (at least for the war info, there’s still a lot of stuff yet 😉
So, back to the drive to Volunteer Point. Two and a half hours to cover 45 miles? After seeing the three roads we took, it makes perfect sense! Leaving Stanley, we drove on a paved road. Beautiful open road but the speed limit is only 40 mph. Imagine a nicely paved 2 lane highway in the US with a max speed of 40. That was one of the time factors.
The next road was gravel, quite possibly the nicest gravel road we’ve ever travelled. No wash-boarding or erosion – it was well packed and easy to travel. Taking that road, Paul told us stories about the various landowners whose property we were driving through (both at the time, and as we came to them).
When you live on an island of 3,000 people, nearly everyone knows everyone. These two types covered the first 35 miles (roughly 10 paved, 25 gravel). Most roads in the Falklands are gravel with only the town and military base connections being paved.
And then there was the next road that wasn’t a road. It wasn’t even a path at times. We were truly going overlanding/off roading through the land-owners fields where they grazed their sheep!!! Now these aren’t like our fields, where you have relatively smooth or level ground, these ranged from small areas of simple grassland, to heather, to bogs, with many a hole and valley or rut to climb down into and back out of.
This remaining 10 miles of the drive took about 1.25 hours, but was oh so much fun! Dips, inclines, rough terrain, a little mud – everything one might want in a 4×4 excursion! The only way to get to Volunteer Point is to take this route, which runs through private land.
We ran in two convoys, with ours being the larger 7-vehicle group. This allows the lead vehicle (us) to open gates and pick reasonable path through the fields, with the remaining vehicles following, and the last vehicle being able to close gates, as well as potentially pull anyone who gets stuck out.
This did happen once for our group, our driver noticed there were only 2 vehicles behind him, so he stopped and radioed back. One of the guys had gotten stuck, and were being pulled out by the others. (The other group and 2 vehicles get stuck with need for recovery.) Yea, this sure felt like riding along with Clay Croft. (If you don’t know who that is, google Expedition Overland, and watch any of their youtube expedition series, they are AMAZING.)
The quick story on the property is that a wealthy widow owns the land and that she’s building a gravel road, at her own expense, to allow people to visit the penguins. While this will make visiting the penguins easier, it will reduce the 4×4 trips and increase any crowds at the Point, so we were very glad to have visited when we did and in the way we did it.
Now let’s talk about penguins. There’s a rule about visiting penguins – you’re in their home so you must respect them. Keep your distance (5 meters) and if they start walking toward you, back up to give them space. Easier said than done when there are over 1,000 penguins in one area! But other than that, we were able to walk into, around, by, near, and generally what felt like into the penguins space (5 meters is actually quite small when you are in the middle of a field).
King penguins and Gentoo penguins coexist here, along with sheep. Seems like a strange mix, but they are truly unconcerned with each other. The penguins walk amongst the sheep and the sheep traipse around the penguin nests/colonies.
Due to the time of year we’re visiting, there were lots of babies. Baby lambs (soooo stinking cute!) and juvenile penguins. Seeing juvenile penguins was most comical as they’re brown and very fat. Maybe we should kindly say “fluffy”. The juveniles are as tall as their adults, but they still have their baby fat/feathers. Anyway, here are pics from the area and of the little guys.
The King’s were the most photogenic, but there were Gentoo’s as well:
We were quite lucky with this excursion – the prior day had a lot of rain and fog and the tour company had to halt operations. We were also quite lucky to have Paul as a driver, not only for his openness about the Falklands and the war, but also for his amazing overlanding skills!
Evening was spent sailing on to the next location which should be Saunders Island – home to thousands of pair of birds (albatross, gentoo penguins, rockhopper penguins, caracaras, etc.)!