Woods go South, Christmas Falkland Island Style

Falklands 2019-20 (Sponsored by AMEX rewards & AVIOS points)  Facebook reminded me that five years ago we were in New Zealand. Given that we were about to embark on another trip that’s a little out of the ordinary I thought I would keep a journal as I still remind myself of our New Zealand trip with the blog I wrote (http://woodiesnz.blogspot.com/). This time we are finally visiting our friends who are regular visitors to Wales but who live in Port Stanley.  Many people know Andrea, Gus, Tessa, Finlay and Oscar. The twin boys were actually born in Bangor as you ain’t allowed the last trimester of pregnancy with twins in the Falklands (not enough special care provision). Anyway I like to remind them they’re Welsh! There are three questions have been regularly asked about this trip: Why go there? How do you get there? Will it be cold? So apart from catching up with old friends, why? Because it’s different! How many people do you know who have been (excluding mi...

Chapter 7 – 2nd – 5th January – Time to Start Heading North We spent another two nights on Sealion Island. On the 2nd January we had a fairly mellow morning and in the afternoon we set off to explore the East end of the island. We started off following the North coast past loads of Elephant seals. Again they largely ignored us but we still passed them land side – giving them clear passage to the sea if they got spooked. There was the odd Magellanic penguin – they get called jackass penguins because their call sounds like a donkey – noisy little things they are too. Slowly the beach became a narrow strip of rocks – I headed a little higher – joining Andrea in the sand dunes. Tomos joined us too and we kept heading for the East tip of the island. Below Sarah, Elin, Gus, tessa and  The Tussac Jungle Oscar kept to what was left of the beach. We eventually lost sight of each other as our sand-dune path became more Tussac grass invested and harder going. We eventually battled...

Chapter 7 – 30th December – 1st January – Happy New Year from Sea lion Island Happy New Year from the southernmost inhabited island in the Falklands. Sea lion Island has a wildlife lodge, an old farmhouse and a few other outhouses. We are staying in the former and the staff occupy some buildings and the Elephant Seal Research team occupy some more. Between everyone there are 40 or so people living here. After the off road excitement of Volunteer’s point, Sunday 30th was a quiet day around Stanley. We did go for a walk but it didn’t really go to plan and it was more a rest and recover day. New year’s eve was our departure to the Island. Two planes changing passengers at Sealion Our flight times were confirmed by FIGAS (Falkland Island Government Air Service) on the Sunday afternoon – with all the passenger manifests and times being posted on their facebook page. It will be the same for our return flight on Thursday – these will be posted sometime on Wednesday afternoon and we ...