The most interesting thing I’ve done as a Local Guide is to visit the Falkland Islands. When the next place south is the Antarctic, you know you are going to have an adventure. Accessible only by cruise ship, the occasional flight from Chile/Argentina or via the 7,910 mile “air bridge” via Cape Verde with the Royal Air Force. The Falkland Islands are not the easiest place to get to.
What nobody tells you before you get there and what no photo can represent is the wind that greets you during the spring a steady +30 km, which can mean a diversion to Uruguay. Although lucky not for us. Landing at RAF Mount Pleasant, you are asked not to take photos. You have your fruit inspected. Your hosts have asked for lemons, limes and bananas which are not easy to come by on the island. Before you head of on the only main road on the island. Rickety dirt save for the occasional tarmac stretches, which seem to have been cast down at random.
My aim on coming to the island was to document them as much as possible as a “local” guide. I had tried to organise a meetup but with no joy, which might be explained by the fact that there is only one expensive data link to the wider world by satellite.
Highlights are many and varied including Christmas Carols under the Whalebone Arch in Stanley. A monument constructed in 1933 from the jawbones of two blue whales and matched by a similar monument in Whitley England.
Walking the battlefields that surround the capital including Wireless Ridge, Mounts Tumbledown and Longdon, which are still littered with the detritus of war. Seeing and documenting where a Victoria Cross was won. Plus paying one’s respect at the military graveyards for the British and the Argentinians. Putting onto Google Maps the tiny graveyards, where the dead were buried near where they fell including the Grave of Nick Taylor RN, the Port Howard Cemetery and Learjet Memorial.
The nature on the island is fantastic with five sorts of penguins to find. You can see Rockhoppers and Gentoos at Penguin Point, along with a host of other wildlife. Great crowds of King Penguins at Volunteer Point including the sweet furry babies and one of the 24 pairs of Macaroni Penguins on Pebble Island, hiding in a crowd.
For me, one nicest thing I’ve done as a Local Guide is bask in the sun and watch a display by the wild dolphins in Port Howard Ferry Terminal. Something I was please to video and upload. Or looking at the whales, Rockhoppers or thousands of Sooty Shearwaters return to their nests at dusk on Kidney Island. Although bumping into a bad tempered Sealion was less fun.
There was the old and for a long-time only Forest on the Islands at Hill Cove and the newer plantings at Alexander Wood to add. Plus the amazing Stone Runs on Mount Kent .
I had plenty of history to track down including the world’s most southerly suspension bridge, built-in 1925 but now falling down. The Cape Pembroke lighthouse at the most easterly point of the Falklands, which you can go up. The brilliant small military museum at Port Howard, the Post Office Museum at Fox Bay dating back to 1899 post and the main museum for the islands at Stanley.
Getting the ferry between East and West Falklands is magical as well as useful. I have put the two golf courses at Port Howard and Stanley on Google Maps; although, judging by the dead sheep in the sand traps of former course I am not sure if anybody still players here.
Walking the streets of Stanley is a delight, past the Lady Elizabeth, Shorty’s Diner, the Memorial Wood, Cathedral, Police Station and the Mrs T and Liberation Memorial. I have tried to put as much on Google maps as possible, but there is still a great need for Local Guides in the Falklands. You will have a fantastic time.
(Follow the blue links for pictures of all these places)
