Falkland Islands

Nope - had no internet access until this morning (Saturday).

We got through it, but we had our roughest day at sea on Wednesday.  The waves got up to about 5.5 metres (16 feet).  The ship was definitely moving around, but it just plowed through that water like a hot knife through butter.  No problem.  Gerard was armed with his wrist bands and ginger Gravol.  So he "sailed" through it.

I took this photo of the sea, but it's hard to get perspective - and I think it was rougher after I took this photo.

So we arrived in the Falkland Islands Thursday morning, and the port town of Stanley.  It kind of reminds me of the far north of Scotland.  Very bleak landscape.

The first thing we did was hire a local guide to take us to Gypsy Cove to see some penguins (hopefully).  It wasn't very far away.  On the way, we went by our ship in the harbour.  We needed tender boats to get to shore.  Smaller ships could get in further, but not ours.  Anyway, pretty good shot of our ship (say that 10 times fast).

So Emma (our guide) told us a bit about the Falklands and the war between Argentina and the British (we all remember that in the 1980s).  Unfortunately, Argentina planted a whole whack of land mines along the beaches and any areas where they thought the British would try to land...and some are still there.  So there are beaches the local people cannot go to.

Just to finish that off, the British didn't come ashore where the Argentinians expected, so surprised them and Britain won the war within a couple of weeks, I think.  Related to the land mines, they hire Zimbabweans to find the land mines for them so they can explode them in a controlled environment.  The Zimbabweans are the best at doing this because, sadly, they've grown up with it.

This beach is good though.  And here's a Magellanic penguin going out to grab a bite to eat.

And here's another one guarding its nest.  There are some baby penguins in these nests.  We saw a couple in nests along the trail, but the photos are not good as they're tucked way back inside.

So that was a worthwhile little adventure.

Here's a shot of the flag of the Falkland Islands.

Dan & Joanne's concierge told them this place was the best spot to eat lunch in town.  So we took him up on that.

I wouldn't mind playing this instrument.  Kinda hard to see the beer tap on the side of this, but it's there.

After lunch, we went for a bit of a walk.  This is the Anglican cathedral.

We went inside - beautiful church.  We ended up chatting with an older local gentleman inside.  He was quite interesting and would have talked to us for longer if we let him.  He has been in the Falklands for 58 years - he was a sheep farmer from England and continued to do so here.  He told us more about the war here.

A little further there was a museum and this at the post office.  Been a while since we've seen one of these.  The red, round thing on the left is the mail box.

It ended up starting to rain, and the seas were a little rough.  The gentleman in the church told us about one time approximately 1,000 passengers from a cruise ship were stranded there overnight (most stayed in the church, but some were billotted out) because they couldn't get people on board the ship from the tenders.  The waves were just too high.  The cruise ship went out to sea, but came back the next day after things calmed down, to pick them up.  So, we didn't want to get caught in something like that.  We went back to the ship.