The rugged charm of the Falkland Islands
Dorothy Wright revels in the rugged charm of her childhood home
Ifirst arrived in Port Stanley after a rough five-day crossing from Montevideo, on RMS Darwin, a 2,000-ton mail ship that carried 30 passengers as well as monthly supplies. It was July 1960. My second arrival in the capital of the Falkland Islands was in February this year, travelling in a six-seater Islander twin-engine plane flying from the Sea Lion Lodge on East Falkland.
We flew over the house my family had lived in back in the 1960s and, apart from the fact that it was now surrounded by other houses, it looked much the same.
Almost 60 years ago, very few people knew where the Falklands were. But since the 1982 war (a ten-week conflict between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the islands which began with an Argentine invasion and ended in their surrender), they are firmly on the world map and I must admit that on taking off from Punta Arenas in Chile at the start of this momentous nostalgia trip, I suffered from cold feet. Icecold feet.
The population of the place has doubled since my day, most of them British Armed Forces personnel; it’s suffered an invasion; they’ve found oil; there’s now a bustling economy; they’ve built roads, a new school, a swimming pool; it attracts tourists.
My memories were of roaming a car-free, crime-free expanse of natural playground on foot, on horseback, by Land Rover, or in one of the two six-seater Beaver seaplanes.
It was too late now to remember those wise words: ‘Never go back…’
Ninety minutes later we landed in Mount Pleasant, the military airfield that serves the islands. There is tight security here, albeit in a somewhat chaotic, low-tech fashion, and the immigration and baggage retrieval took a while, although no longer than at many other international airports.
Our journey onwards from Mount Pleasant was to be in an Islander and there was a disconcerting moment when not just our baggage but our bodies were subject to the indignities of the scales.
I closed my eyes and crossed my fingers – after all, we had eaten well in Chile!
But we were soon on our way and as we banked over the base and headed northwest, my earlier worries began to fade.
This landscape was the one I remembered: great expanses of hilly wilderness, with rocky outcrops and the ‘stone rivers’ left by ancient glaciers. Apart from one or two tiny settlements, it was deserted. Then we crossed Falkland Sound, which divides East Falkland from West, and before long were touching down on a short stretch of flattened grass marked by a tiny hut and a windsock: the ‘airstrip’ at Pebble Island. Rikki and Monty met us in a big 4x4 and drove us down the hill to Pebble Island Lodge, formerly the farm manager’s home but now a charming guest house. Eight of us sat down that evening for a delicious threecourse meal: chicken salad, locally caught mullet and a Chilean pudding, all homecooked and served by Veronica, the Chilean housekeeper; selfserve drinks were from an unattended ‘honesty’ bar, where payment is left to the guest.
The following day we set off with Monty in the 4x4 to see the sights of Pebble Island.
Off-road (there isn’t one) the whole way, this was a birdwatchers’ paradise.
Three sorts of penguins: rockhoppers, gentoos and magellanic (known locally as jackasses because of the extraordinary braying sound they make); giant petrels, turkey vultures, upland geese (they are everywhere!) a hawk, another hawk attacking upland geese and many more species besides. What was so special was that we were alone with the wildlife and they were
unafraid. The only other humans we saw were a mother and daughter moving their sheep. In Pebble Island there are also some echoes of the 1982 war. A memorial for British destroyer HMS Coventry, which sank just off the coast; pieces of a shot-down Argentine Dagger jet; All now an intrinsic part of the landscape. After Pebble Island, we flew to the other extremity of the archipelago, Sea Lion Island, which is far smaller (2,236 acres) but even richer in wildlife, a nature reserve that was formerly a sheep farm but is now a haven for birds and seals. It’s most famous for its elephant seals but is also home (in the breeding season) to southern sea lions as well as gentoo, magellanic and rockhoppers. We even saw a lost king penguin. There are orcas, imperial cormorants, skua, albatross, grebe, shearwater, all sorts of goose, duck and teal; caracara, tern, snipe and, unique to the Falkland Islands, the Cobb’s wren.
We saw them all and more, many of them almost close enough to touch.
As on Pebble Island, the lodge at Sea Lion is comfortable and friendly, with a lovely atmosphere and tasty home-cooked food.
From the windows you can see two penguin colonies and, as long as you don’t try going through the tussac grass (we did!), it’s a 15-minute walk to a beach where elephant seals bask.
Theorcascan,potentially,beseen from any point on the island. We were lucky enough to catch them off an even closer beach (five minutes away) and we watched for 20 minutes while a pod of six showed off their stunning moves.
The last stop during our week stay was Port Stanley, a thriving, bustling little city which in some ways has changed enormously over the years and yet remains essentially the same.
I had no difficulty finding my way around and, despite development, many buildings and views are instantly recognisable.
The museum was fascinating, with some evocative pictures and artefacts and a perfect reconstructed smithy and printing works.
From Stanley you can visit Volunteer Point (largely another rollercoaster off-road trip), where king penguins congregate in their hundreds.
They waddle down to the white sandy beach and plunge into the waves with an enviable disregard for the tourists – perhaps because, unlike so many wildlife trips and safaris, the birds far outnumber their visitors, at a rough guess by three or four hundred to one.
Another day trip from the capital is Darwin, Goose Green and San Carlos, where much of the conflict took place in 1982 and where the war cemeteries are.
Our guide, nine at the time, had many moving stories from those 74 days as well as tales of veterans from both sides who visit.
It was a deeply poignant to see the players in such a bitter conflict show such respect for one another. It made my visit.