Wednesday, January 20th, 2010By 7:00 am we were at 55 degrees south, nearly even with the southernmost tip of South America… I keep a chart of our position as we travel… This morning, we are literally nearly off the lower edge of the map. Today is a transit, near due south, towards the Antarctic Peninsula. It is expected by day’s end we will be seeing ice bergs… for now we see the sea, the sky, and clouds.
Yesterday, Tuesday, we were in the Falkland Islands… an enclave of Brittan in the south Atlantic... It was rough as we anchored in the outer of the two bays that make up Stanley Harbor… rough enough to make the tender ride from the ship exciting and a bit wet… Stanley is a small town, 4 blocks deep, a mile or so long, stretching along the edge of the inner harbor. It is very English, with low stone buildings with sheet iron roofs, brightly painted… There are few trees but several very nice gardens… Red English phone boxes, land rovers and pubs…
But we were not there for a bit of England… We were here to see penguins… We had made arraignments in advance with Patrick Watt, a local guide… He had booked 28 passengers from the ship on a trip to Volunteer Point, penguin rookery, with Magellanic, Gentoo, and King penguins… Volunteer point is about 10 miles from where the ship was anchored, but it probably 50 miles by road, or lack thereof… the last 11 miles being overland, over the peat moors… a trip which can take 2.5 hours, and 2.5 hours back… Given time with the penguins (that after all is why we came) the trip takes more than 7 hours… We are scheduled to be in Stanley for just over 8 hours…
But first we had to get off the ship…
Stanley is a tender port… instead of docking, the Veendam anchored in the outer of the two bays, then dropped 4 of her boats and ferried or “tendered” the passengers ashore… each tender carries about 90 people (in an emergency, used as a life boat she carries 150 passengers, we hope we never experience that…) The trip into town takes about 10 minutes or so, so each boat can only make two trips an hour… math suggests it could take as long as three hours to get everyone ashore… Cruise ships make money by selling the passengers stuff… everything from drinks, to spa treatments, to drinks, to art work, to drinks, to photos of you as you walk down the gangway, to more drinks, to shore excursions… Of course the ship would prefer you book their shore excursions, and we had not… we had booked a local excursion… The ship gives their excursion guests priority on the tenders… We need to get off early… There is conflict… Those on ship’s excursions go to one theater, those without the other… There are rumors… people or fidgeting… there is no ship’s crew available to answer questions for the independents… We (and 22 others) manage to get on the first tender…
It is an exciting tender ride… it is rough, some of the waves are splashing over the tender… the roof is leaking… we arrive at the dock, find Patrick then wait for the others booked on our tour… the next 6 or 8 tenders only carry official ship’s excursion guests… The ship’s tour departs. Patrick sends five vehicles ahead while we wait for the rest of the group. A few more of Patrick’s guests find their way ashore, and finally, still a few guests short we depart for Volunteer Point… We are lucky… we get to ride with Patrick.
We leave town, towards the hills which were the battle ground during the Argentine invasion and expulsion… There are mine fields… 27 years later… There is a team from Zimbabwe working to clear the mines…
The war haunts the place… Patrick points out the place where a British tank was destroyed by a Argentine mine… there is a cairn and a cross atop the hill… marking where two of the Royal Marines fell retaking it… Further along radar installation can be seen atop another hill, part of the new defensive installations. In the valley nearby the burnt remains of an Argentine helicopter… One of several destroyed nearby by British Harriers… It’s not just the artifacts; Patrick and many of the islanders we meet lived through the invasion… Their memories are still fresh…
We leave town on a paved road, then turn onto a good gravel road, built since the war… This is sheep country… but not the sheep country of home where shepherds and dogs trend the flocks… here they let the sheep loose to graze, then round them up a couple of times a year, much as cattle are run across the aired west of Nevada… the gravel roads get a bit smaller and rougher as we turn off once again… then, at a sheep farm the road ends and we set off across the moor.
It has rained heavily the day before. The moors are wet and the tracks treacherous…
We pause to open and shut gates… we follow the existing track at first, driving wide, onto fresh ground where the track crosses bogs, now deep with mud churned by the tires of previous vehicles. Patrick has 10 vehicles out today, in two groups of 5… the ship has group of 20… there are at least a couple more… It is important to travel in groups… so we can drag each other out if we get “bogged.” Patrick has chosen the “old winter track” which hasn’t been used in a couple of years. It has the advantage of being less churned than the common route. Our group gets bogged twice… the first time the last vehicle gets stuck in one of the churned spots… the second time it was Patrick’s turn… It was at a gate, with a known deep bog… we had stopped to place a couple of loose fence posts and 5 sand bags in the hole before trying to pass… It was spectacular… one tire sunk deeply in the muck, two in the air… They drop a fence, the rest of the vehicles drive across, tow Patrick out, and we are on our way. We later find out the 20 vehicles of the ship’s tour bog 30 times on the way in.
We arrive at Volunteer Point about 15 minutes behind the groups that had left an hour earlier… There are penguins everywhere… The Gentoo and King Penguins are gathered in separate breading colonies… standing in large groups, while the Magellanic penguins are scattered along the beach and in their burrows…
The breeding areas are marked with white rocks to keep visitors out, but the penguins frequently don’t respect the rocks and wander among the visitors and the occasional sheep.
We spend about an hour and a half wandering among the penguins… Many pictures are taken… we eat a picnic lunch (egg salad sandwiches) then load back aboard the Land Rovers and other vehicles… The ship’s tour leaves first, 15 minutes ahead of us. This time Patrick’s 10 vehicles travel as one group. Again, we take the old winter track… this time we only have one vehicle bog once… we can see the ship’s excursion on the ridge as they pull at least one vehicle out as well. Our route is shorter… we reach the sheep ranch and the gravel road ahead of the ship’s tour.
We pause a couple of times on the way back for photos… photos of the “rock rivers”, curious cascades of broken rock, left over from long ago glacial events… we stop so I can take a photo of the burnt wreckage of the Argentine helicopter, a variation of a large flightless bird… I take a picture of one of the too frequent mine field signs…
Back in town, Patrick takes us to see the Lady Elizabeth… a 1878 iron hulled square rigger, which limped into the Falklands 100 years ago after a bad trip around Cape Horn… abandoned by her owners, she was a dockside warehouse until 1934, when in a storm she broke loose and grounded at the eastern end of the harbor… she has sat there since, stuck in the mud… She still carries here lower masts and one spar… truly a ghost… nearby are the grounded remains of a 100 year old tug and several whale ships… fragments of more ships are found closer to town… Ashore is the remains of the bow of a wooden sailing ship… drug ashore to preserve the remains… The carvings around the bow houser holes surviving to show how graceful she once was…
Nearby they are blowing up some of the mines… you see the explosion several seconds before you hear the blast… It's a very visceral reminder of the war.
Patrick drives us through town along the waterfront… This is his home… with all the memories of past and hopes and pride in its future… past new buildings being built to support the new oil drilling efforts, We visit the whale bone arch, the war memorial, the Centennial memorial, drive past the government building and the Governor’s home…
We get to the pier to catch the last tender (there will be several more tenders, for a late ship’s tour.)
We make our way to the “Crow’s Nest” (it’s a bar at the high on the bow of the ship with a wonderful view) to watch as we sail away…
Now Wednesday, 11:00The fog has closed in on the ship… We are sounding our fog horn… This has been a very quiet day with most of our fellow passengers taking their time getting up…
The seas are growing, while the waves are not great, the ship’s movement much more pronounced… Passengers now tack down the halls, swaying as if drunk… Blue sky is showing, but visibility at sea level is down less than 100 yards.
It’s now nearly time for lunch, as we abandon measurements of time, substituting meals in place of hours… Visibility decreases to zero… We are completely enveloped in fog... Tina doesn’t like it… She says it best… “We are in the coolest place in the world, literally and figuratively, and we can’t see an F’ing thing”
