February 17 - New Island, Falklands

Actually the title is not quite right.  I’m on the ship and we’re lying off New Island.  Today is the last of the zodiac days for this segment of the cruise and I decided to stay on the ship.  It’s another water landing and I didn’t like wading in the horrid boots on shifting sand.  Iggy described the outing last night and after hearing it I decided it wasn’t for me.  After wading ashore we were to walk about 1 km, climb a hill to about 1600 feet of elevation (all this in our clunky boots), to see some albatross nests. I’m sure it’s wonderful but not for me. If I get some nice photos from friends, I’ll post them for you to see.

My last couple of posts haven’t been very exciting but I feel that I’ve learned a lot.  I want to write a little more about the bogs I rode through yesterday.  East Island, and I gather most of the Falkland islands, are covered with peat, which is decayed organic matter. Scattered around are lots of rocks and boulders.  My driver Kersey told us that at her farm they use dried peat for all their heating and cooking.  They have electricity but most of their fuel consumption is supplied by peat which they cut and dry on their own land.  To travel across the bogs the leader of our caravan was what I can best describe as similar to a scout for wagon trains that went west in the 19th century US.  The leader was a woman named Linda who can apparently “read” the bogs and figure out “tracks” across them where the vehicles probably won’t get stuck. We took one track out to the penguin place and then a different one back. Neither was marked in any way and apparently the tracks are never quite the same from day to day.

Stanley, the main town, has grown tremendously since I last saw it 15 years ago. There are actually two little housing developments that have sprung up next to the old town.  There are no trees on the islands so the housing is all pre-fab.  It’s built in the UK, shipped, and then assembled like a Lego set.  Incidentally, everything except for some beef and motton, and a few root vegetables has to be shipped in.  As a result, things are very expensive. Kersey said she has had a craving for kiwis (I mentioned she’s pregnant). Four kiwis cost her £ 5, that’s a little over $6.

This is the Anglicsn csthedral in Stanley that we passed on our way back into town.  That arch is made of whale jawbones.

I found this photo when I was looking through yesterday's photos.  The terrain around those three guys is what we drove through for hours and what looks like solid grassland is really peat bogs which are mucky, black muddy messes that the wheels sink into.

I was also curious about how people get off the island or what happens in a medical emergency.  They have a hospital which can handle many routine things, but for anything out of the ordinary people have to be med-evaced.  There are 2 British military flights to the UK weekly on which 15 seats are usually reserved for civilian use. Those seats aren’t free though. It costs £ 2500 ($3100) for a round trip.  Aside from those, there is one flight per week on the Chilean airline Latam to Santiago.  That flight was suspended during Covid and just recently resumed.  Interestingly, the Falklands didn’t have any Covid cases at all until April, 2022, because they are so isolated.