Ushuaia to Rio Gallegos, Argentina, to Stanley, Falkland Islands

27 Feb - 1 Mar 2006

British Culture and King Penguins

The next day, we went on a Land Rover trip over the soft and soggy 'camp' to Volunteer Point to see the largest king penguin colony in the Falklands. Ian, the driver wasn’t very talkative. Perhaps this was just as well, since he needed to concentrate on the driving. We could easily have got bogged down in that spongy terrain. Instead we chatted to our fellow passengers, a well-travelled English couple. The weather was typical of Falkland Islands weather in the summer, windy with wet spells and dry spells, and not a lot of sun. Most of the penguins seemed to congregate some distance away from the nearby beach, so they had a fair walk to reach the sea. We followed one solitary king penguin who decided to brave the waters alone. After our picnic lunch in a nearby shack, we checked out the situation on the beach again, and this time we saw several of them, following each other into the water in single file. Apart from the king penguins there were colonies of gentoos (orange beak and feet) and magellanic (burrowing, black and white penguins) and they didn’t seem to mind mingling with each other.
It rained quite heavily while we were having lunch, and the return journey over the ‘camp’ was even more of a challenge to the driver. Back in Stanley, Ian drove us to our new lodgings for the night. We were staying one more night in town than originally planned and the Waterfront Guest House didn’t have room for us. So for our last night, we stayed at the very comfortable b&b run by Arlette Betts. As soon as we told her we were travelling in our own aircraft, she said she’d had the visit a few years ago of some aviators from Brazil… Margi and Gerard Moss! Arlette was thrilled when we told her they were our friends and promptly invited us to join her and the other guests for an aperitif.