Port Stanley, Falkland Islands

After five wonderful days at sea, we arrived at Port Stanley of the Falkland Islands at approximately 8:00 AM this morning.

Although the Falkland’s consist of approximately 700 Falkland Islands, there are two main inhabited islands. The Falkland Islands are most known for the war in 1982 when an Argentina force invaded the Falklands. Only about 3,000 people live on the two main islands. The major economic drivers are tourism and fishing. About three cruise ships visit the Falklands during the tourism season, starting in November and ending in March.

The town of Stanley is the capital of the Falklands. A dedicated tender took the passenger’s on our tour over to the island at 11:00 AM this morning. Our tour was called the Sparrow Cove Penguin Exploration. After we disembarked the tender we traveled about 30 to 45 minutes in four-wheel drive vehicles to a spot on the island where we would then spend about 90 minutes viewing the penguins. Our trip was literally over rugged terrain as there were no roads. We viewed an extremely large number of penguins, mostly a colony of nearly 1,600 Centoo Penguins along with a small colony of King Penguins. There were several hundred penguins, mostly baby penguins. The adult penguins gather food during the daytime and early afternoon hours and by around 3:00 PM are feeding the baby penguins.

Thank goodness that we dressed properly for this excursion with The North Face Jackets, sweaters, gloves, waterproof pants and gloves as it was very cold and windy. When we first disembarked the tenders it started to rain but by the time we began viewing the penguins the rain had stopped. However, about half way through the penguin viewing ice and sleet started to come down for a little while.

Since our tour did not leave until 11:00 AM, after having breakfast we worked out in the Fitness Center this morning for over an hour. There were very few people working out this morning since various tours were running throughout the day so this turned out to be a perfect time to use the center.

After returning to the ship, we ate in the venue called Tastes. We each had a seafood salad. After lunch we headed to the laundry room to wash our shoes and pants since each had gotten somewhat muddy from the excursion. Many of our fellow passengers did likewise.

Since this is the last very cold area of the World Cruise we will pack up those items that we purposely brought with us for the areas of South America that are quite cold in order to create additional room in our closet. As we had North towards places such as Buenos Aires and to Rio De Janeiro, the weather will become quite hot.

This evening we had a wonderful dinner in the main dining room. We ordered a special entrée of Sea Bass. It was wonderful and we really appreciate the enthusiasm of our head waiter, Bruno.

Tomorrow we will enjoy another sea day and all of the activities while at sea.

Keith & Anne Marie