Our first tender port – and really not too terribly bad. Line up for tickets (got there pretty early but line was still pretty long), managed to get on #3 boat, then queued up with everyone at the atrium level where staff did a good job of keeping everyone at bay and waiting for their correct tender.
We were tendered out in the bay, with a 20 minute tender ride ashore. From our vantage point on the ship – wow! Talk about a desolate place to be. nothing but barren fields, rocks and mountains with a teeny, little town nestled in a harbor. The houses had cute (from this distance) colored tin roofs – but there weren’t a lot of them (houses, that is!). Only 2,500 people live here in the Southern most outpost of the British empire. And only about 1800 of them in Stanley – the biggest town on the islands.
We are ashore by about 10am – dropped into a cold and blustery wind with threatening, overcast skies. Our original plan was to walk to Gypsy cove, about 4 miles away, to see the penguins and other wildlife. But between the weather (that wind was bitter!) and the health factor (now Ed has my cold….I feel SO BAD! And it’s his awful day today), we decide to just wander down the path a bit to the cemetery then explore the town.
Good move as it turns out (we found out later you couldn’t even get near the penguins because of the land mines still on the beach – so you needed binoculars to see anything – and heck, we’d already seen 800,000 Magellanic penguins up close – so who needed to see a few more at a distance?). The cemetery was an interesting diversion with graves from the 1800’s and early 1900’s. It’s a hard life here – no one lived much past 50 years of age in those days. The newer graves at the end of the cemetery showed that the life span has been improving here – obviously with medical advances, but you’re still a long way away from anything here – so it’s still got to be a hard way to live.
We wandered back into town, and explored a couple of streets and walked up to the top of the big hill for a birds eye view of the town. Back down at sea level, we stopped at Michele’s cafe – a little teeny house that served diner type food and awesome coffee, which was exactly what we needed to warm ourselves up after our brisk little walk.
The town is starting to fill up with cruise passengers now – up until we stopped for coffee – it was all but deserted. No one on the streets, no one around, can’t even imagine this place in the winter when no ships come in and it’s just the locals. (Remember, this is their summer, and it’s still cold as all and dreary!) We headed down to the main drag – Ross road – and started off toward the museum for a lesson in Falklands history (i.e., the 1982 conflict with Argentina).
We passed the whalebone arch, constructed of 2 jawbones from blue whales, the Government House, a very pretty little white house with a beautiful garden, and the 1982 Liberation Memorial, built to give tribute to the British forces who died during the conflict. It’s about a 30 minute stroll to the little museum at the end of the town. We wandered in, and if we weren’t so honest, could have gotten away without paying the $12 US entry fee (you just walk in, there is a counter that says Gift Shop, but no ticket window or anything – but you are supposed to pay at the counter. If there are a lot of people milling about, you could just walk right in.) The museum was pretty small, but with some interesting displays of how Falklanders live, now and in the early days of the settlement.
The most interesting part, though, was the “War room”. This room had all sorts of memorabilia from the 1982 war when Argentina attacked the Falklands to try to capture it back under Argentinean rule. What they were thinking, who knows? Some of the propaganda was almost comical. There were letters and postcards that Argentineans were supposed to send to the Falklands people telling them how lucky they were to be saved from the British by Argentina. How the Falklanders were always Argentinean and always would be. And Argentina was so happy to have them back.
It was really bizarre – of course, the whole occupation lasted really only as long as it took Britain to get the troops to the Falklands. Once there, the war itself didn’t last too long, with, of course, Britain being successful in driving the Argentineans out of the islands. In between though, it must have been ugly. In the newspaper we bought (the Penguin News!!!!) there was an article about court cases that are still going on today that deal with invasions and war crimes during the 1982 invasion. That room alone was worth the price of admission for us.
After the museum, we hit the grocery store to stock up for the sail around the Horn. Then hit a little pub, the Victory Bar, where we had a traditional English pub lunch – fish and chips, with beer and wine. That place was adorable – reminded us so much of the bar Northern Exposure – we kept waiting for Harlan and Shelly to come walking out of the back! After lunch, we hooked up with the local internet in the tourist center, but, as the signs said, it was very slow. Even slower than on the ship! The only bonus was the ability to use Skype to make a couple business phone calls. Then it was just too brutally slow to handle, so we just left and joined the line to grab a tender back to the ship.
All in all, it was a great day. It’s amazing we’re here – the Falklands! And Stanley is a cute little, ramshackle town rising up the hill from the harbor. The barren landscape around it is contrasted with gorgeous flowers and shrubs in town (amazing how these plants can survive in this hard climate – we know it can get warm – but mostly it’s cold and bitter so these plants must be really hardy). The whole place reminds us very much of Alaska – maybe Kodiak or Sitka (without all the green) – especially that little pub!
Back aboard, we get some coffee, and head up top on deck, where the weather had changed into a gorgeous sunny day with a nice cool breeze. We stayed up on deck as we sailed away and watched The Falkland Islands fade into the distance. Tomorrow – sailing around the Horn!
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