ANTARCTICA - THE LAST FRONTIER (Part 2)

Continuing with the dream of visiting Antarctica just to see what it was really like? We now look at the second installment of our series about the excitement of cruising to, in and through Antarctica. The article was written and photographed by our good friends, Peter and Alice who have favored us with their cruise business. We thank Peter and Alice for their friendship, their encouragement and their preparation of this series.

Visiting Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands

The Falkland Islands are a United Kingdom Overseas Territory by choice. Supreme authority is vested in Her Majesty The Queen and exercised by a Governor on her behalf, with the advice and assistance of the Executive Council and Legislative Assembly.

After we left Buenos Aires the seas became a bit rough and choppy. Captain Perrin had to slow the ship down to reduce the amount of rocking; therefore, we arrived in Stanley approximately 3 hours later than scheduled. Stanley’s port requires tendering which is about 2 ½ miles out and takes 20-30 minutes. The whole process took a lot longer than normal. Three early morning tours were cancelled including ours.

The main street (Ross Road) in town is along the harbor and you can easily walk around town shopping and sightseeing. There are five different species of breeding penguins on the Falkland Islands. Gentoo and Rockhopper Penguins are two species of these penguins. A shuttle to see Gentoo penguins at Gypsy Cove is available at the pier ($20 round trip per person).

The Falkland Islands (300 nautical miles off Argentina coast) are approximately 200 islands covering 4,700 sq miles (a little smaller than Connecticut). It rains or lightly snows 250 days a year with an average temperature of 60 degrees. Gales occur frequently and they say it is rare to have calm sunny days. The weather can be quite unpredictable. Within a 20 minute period you can experience all 4 seasons. Fortunately for us – we didn’t since we had a beautiful sunny afternoon with a mild breeze.

Stanley became the capital in 1845 and, being British, the currency is the Pound Sterling but they cheerfully take US dollars or credit cards. It is a very small town (the largest of the Falklands) with about 2,100 residents out of a total population of 3,000. Our ship had 2,556 passengers. Also in port was the Norwegian Sun with about 1,000 people. The population of this small town more than doubled with these two ships in port. The shopkeepers were very friendly and happy to see us.

With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, the Falklands no longer served as a major shipping channel. Previously, many sailing ships (mostly traders and whalers) rounding Cape Horn succumbed to the fierce winds and waves of the South Atlantic. Ships stopped at the Falklands for provisions, water, coal or repairs. The Falklands were also supported by sheep farming. Currently there are 500,000 sheep. With a major decline in wool exports (they still export fine expensive Merino wool), farmers are now subsidized about $40 million per year by revenues generated by the fishing industry. It is yet to be determined what will happen to this area’s unexplored oil and gas deposits.

Argentine Special Forces invaded the island on April 2, 1982. Even today, landmines still exist on the island, but not in Stanley. The Argentineans were met with stiff resistance from the Royal Marines. Battles took place in the air, on the sea (the Argentinean cruiser General Belgrano was lost with most hands), and on land in the Northern part of the island, The Queen Mary was anchored off shore acting as a troop and supply vessel. With tremendous loss of life (900 people), a British Task Force liberated the island on June 14, 1982 after 74 days of occupation. The loss of this war caused the collapse of the Argentine military dictatorship and resulted in the restoration of constitutional democracy in Argentina. Only recently was the ban lifted to permit citizens of Argentina to visit the Falklands. Passengers were advised as a courtesy not to wear clothing with an Argentinean logo ashore. We visited the 1982 War Memorial honoring the British Forces lost in this war.

On our walk through town we visited Christ Church Cathedral (built in 1892) to view its beautiful stained windows. Adjacent to the church is Whale Bone Arch built in 1933 to commemorate the centenary of British rule. It is made out of 4 converging whale ribs. The four lower jawbones are from blue whales caught in the South Shetland Islands.

We walked past the lovely gardens at the terraced Jubilee House (named to celebrate Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee). Along our walk there were many 150 year old brightly painted wooden pioneer cottages with carefully planned colorful gardens. The roofs are made of corrugated iron since slate was too expensive.

Next - CRUISING THE ANTARCTIC PENNINSULA