Woods go South, Christmas Falkland Island Style

Chapter 6 – 29th December – Volunteer’s Point – Off-road Penguin Tour Well it has been quite a day. Hard to believe we have been on the islands a week now. We note that today’s weekly LAN airlines flight has been delayed by the closure of Mount Pleasant again. Fingers crossed for us next week. Today we have been to Volunteer Point (named after the first ship to visit). This is home to three distant penguin colonies – Magellanic, Gentoo (seen ‘em already)  and a thousand or so King Penguins (second largest type in the World). Getting to the Point was an adventure in itself (as was getting back to Stanley again). Whilst 20 or so miles away as the crow flies; driving there is another matter. It was just over an hour to Johnson’s Harbour Settlement on mostly gravel roads. That was the easy bit. It was then on for another ten miles completely off road. I don’t mean bad road – I mean no road. We drove over moorland – avoiding ditches and ponds where possible and cutting across w...

Chapter 5 – 28th December – Cruise Ship Day The “Star Princess” anchored off Stanley Today the population of Stanley more than doubled. We were visited by a nature cruise ship (about 200 passengers) and a floating hotel – The Star Princess (2400 passengers). The town was chaotic. Tourists wondering around taking selfies, walking in front of traffic (they forget we drive on the left) and the currency in widest circulation today – the US$. Sleepy Stanley was very different. The Clausens run a transport company so today is payday. Many tours departing the port and tickets being sold to those who (wisely) hadn’t booked through the ship’s excursions desk. Andrea was doing a fine job helping the tourists part with their money. We delivered a coffee and then retreated to people watch for a while. They kept asking for Wi-fi access and then discovered it didn’t come cheap ;) Magellanics on the way back to the young We soon escaped and decided to go for a coastal walk for around 5 ...

Chapter 4 - Thursday 27th December – The East Falkland Loop  Today we drove around 180 miles. Most of this was spent on gravel roads. We followed the route clockwise around East Falkland with a detour into Lafonia which joints onto East Falkland at Goose Green. It was good to have a decent 4x4 that made the conditions easy and we didn’t exactly have to contend with much in the way of traffic. Argentine Cemetery We headed out of Stanley past Mount Pleasant and made our first stop at the Argentine cemetery near Darwin settlement. A few hundred are buried here. Mostly conscripted men with little choice in the fool’s errand, the military junta of the time sent them on. There was a strange eary jingling in the place from the rosemary beads which visiting families had left on the gravestones. We then passed through Goose Green where our host Andrea had spent most of the war as a child prisoner of war locked in the village hall. The settlement consists of a few houses, the...

22nd December Arrival The flight departed on time and arrived early. As Mount Pleasant is an active military base, we were warned when we left the plane that photos were forbidden. Nobody seemed to tell that to our friends waiting behind the fence and clicking away capturing our arrival.  No photos allowed! Blue skies - but hang on - no hats allowed - too windy Immigration into the British Overseas Territory of the Falklands involves considerably more paperwork than Chile and we are admitted for two “weaks” – I didn’t have the “strength” to argue ;) it makes a fun passport stamp. I also have to part with £25 each in tax when we leave. I’m assured this is just air passenger duty paid direct and not hidden in the ticket cost. Our baggage was thoroughly checked by the sniffer dogs but they failed to detect Sarah’s contraband “Tetley teabags”. We were in - waiting for us were most of the Clausen family! They transported us to Stanley (Port Stanley to the uninitiated) in ...

Chapter 2 (20-22nd December – Chile) So as I start to type it’s actually Christmas Eve and I really thought I would have had plenty of time to keep my log up to date. I hadn’t reckoned on everyone making sure I haven’t been bored to date! Anyhow I’ll catch up; after all Christmas Day is ahead. So we walked into Chile on Wednesday night after a long flight. Immigration consisted of filling in a short customs form and then handing it over with passports after a short 5 min queue. Unless you’re Australian. Australians have a special desk where they part with around $100 to enter – this is known as a reciprocal entry fee – in other words – “you shaft us so we’ll shaft you”. This my friends  is the shape of things to come post Brexit. Our 90 day entry was free and painless. The hotel was next to the terminal (IHG points this time) and the comfortable beds very welcome. Thursday morning was gloriously sunny forecast to be around 30C in Santiago. That would have been poor preparatio...

Tuesday 18th December - to Madrid In the last five years there seems to have been plenty of travel stresses on our Christmas holidays. Air traffic control failing in whole UK, fog delays and lost baggage (all of it). So it was no surprise to learn that the A55 - the road of all of North Wales uses to get anywhere ended up closed. This was due to a “device” being found on Colwyn Bay beach. This is ironic given we thought the mines were to be avoided in The Falklands not North Wales. Anyway I would imagine it was a WWII mine being washed ashore and the military dealt with it eventually. Given our past experiences we did leave ridiculously early and avoided this closure by about 30min. Finally some luck. Even the flights to London and onward to Madrid were only an hour or so late! We found our baggage (all of it) all be it on the wrong carousel. We got a six hours sleep in the hotel and parted with 30 euros for a bloody pizza from room service - but not much choice at midnight. Fun fac...