Tales from my travels
After a huge breakfast featuring homegrown rhubarb with homemade yoghurt and porridge with homemade cream I spent a little time out in the garden on the swing, before getting a lift back down to the airstrip with the guests who were leaving on the first flight. I collared the poor pilot and told him that…
Having completed our doctors’ visit we made the half hour drive from the north end of the island back to the settlement. Carcass Island is the only place that I visited on my 2009 trip to the Falklands that I’ve been back to on this trip, but I couldn’t remember what to expect or match…
One of the highlights of coming out to the Falkland Islands for my elective was always going to be accompanying the doctor(s) on a visit out to camp (i.e. outside of Stanley). Camp visits take place each Tuesday with a different group of settlements being visited each week on a 6 week rotation. I had…
Knowing that I needed to be ready to be picked up just after 11am I got myself out of the house at about 7.30 on Sunday and set off for a walk down to the beach and then across to the coast on the other side of the island and back up to the settlement. …
Despite my plans to be up for sunrise I ended up falling back to sleep and having a rather late start. When I finally managed to get myself moving I headed over in the direction of the rockhopper colony, just a 15 minute walk from the settlement. On the way, though, I was distracted by…
So far my island hopping has taken me northwest, but this week’s visit to Bleaker Island has me travelling southwards for the first time. The flight is only 25 minutes but we took a small detour, first dropping off some passengers on Sea Lion Island before heading back to Bleaker. We had some lovely views…
My last day on Pebble and my flight was due to go at around midday so I stayed fairly close to the settlement. I went out with a couple other guests and was dropped at Elephant Beach so that I could walk back via the ponds and see the birds there. It was a rather…
I spent all of Saturday on a tour down to the west end of the island. Pebble has a beautiful coastline with sandy, rocky and pebbled beaches and I was lucky to have a mainly sunny day to enjoy them. Unfortunately whilst I was happily tramping around the rocks the sole of one of my…
We saw plenty of birds on my tour of the islands, most notable being another few macaroni penguins mixed in with the rockhoppers. I also saw my first rock shags, some blackish oystercatchers and a juvenile black-crowned night heron. A lot of the rockhoppers are moulting and looking rather miserable! There were a large number…
Pebble Island is known for both its wildlife and its numerous wrecks of Argentine planes dating back to the 1982 war. We came across a number of the wrecks on my tour down to the west end of the island. It’s incredible how well the wrecks are preserved, and also how scattered the sections of…