After rounding Cape Horn, we made straight for the Falkland Islands. Remember, to be an official “full” rounding of Cape Horn in the eyes of the association tracking such things, we needed to reach 50 degrees south on both sides of South America. This meant going past the Falklands for a few hundred miles and turning back around. Also remember that we left Auckland 10 days late. We ended up reaching the Falklands only 1 day later than scheduled, having made up 9 days en route. The association considered the circumstances and gave everyone on the voyage full membership as a Cape Horner.
A word about getting to and from the Falklands: there are exactly 3 scheduled flights a week, and 2 of them are “air bridges” flown by the UK Royal Air Force to/from Britain. The other is a commercial flight to Chile. Since we were running late in Auckland, I changed my flight out (the commercial one) to the next available flight, one week later. This meant I had a week to kill on the island.
The Falklands also has almost no internet access: it’s surrounded by deep trenches preventing the laying of undersea cables. There is satellite internet available, but in order to use it you have to buy access cards at the rate of 10 GBP ($16) for 100 minutes. And even then you can only get online at a few specific hotspots around Port Stanley. There is no cell service provider. This meant I had a week to kill and nothing to kill it with.
What does one do in the Falklands? Go visit some penguins, of course.
At Volunteer Point, there is a colony of 3 species of penguins: King, Gentoo and Magellanic. They each have their own “roosts”, areas where they congregate and spawn, but they’re right next to each other. We get to be very very close to them, so long as we stay outside the rock rings set up around the roosts and don’t block the penguins’ access to the sea.
Certainly the prettiest ones were the King penguins, who are also the largest. They hold their eggs on their feet, under their bellies.
The Magellanic were molting while we were there.
The Gentoo keep their eggs in little holes in the ground.
The penguins mostly stayed inside their marked area, but we could still get close to some outlying ones.
The more dramatic action was on the beach. The penguins get their food in the sea, so one by one or in small groups they set out to make the trek to the water.
Seriously, they do walk funny.
The grass gives way to sand eventually.
On the beach, it was extremely windy — something like 40-50 mph. Along the ground, there was a foot-high torrent of blowing sand.
Once at the water, they would play in the waves and apparently get some sustenance out of it.
After eating their fill in the water, they had to make their way back to the roost, upwind, getting sandblasted in the face.
I felt bad for the solo ones, they looked lonely. The groups looked happier.
Sometimes a penguin would get tired and just stand there, collecting sand.
On the way back, our driver pulled over in the valley outside Port Stanley to show us some relics of the war over the Falklands in 1982. The Argentinians invaded the British-held Falklands, occupied it, and fortified their positions in preparation for the inevitable counter-attack. This included staging military helicopters in the valley outside Port Stanley to protect them from attack by sea.
The British counter-attack blew up these two helicopters on the ground or just taking off as they pushed overland towards Stanley. We were told that one was a Chinook, the other a Puma.
Health and Safety doesn’t really enter into it. The island is so remote and sparsely populated you can walk right up to these bits of military history, and crawl all over them.
