Day 7: West Point to Stanley

Day 7:  West Point to Stanley, capital of the Falklands, departing around 8pm for the journey to S. Georgia island

Weather: Slight overcast as always, cold and windy, rained around 9pm and then cleared to see a few stars. It’s not really dark enough for stargazing until 10pm (which is after THB’s bedtime).

Quote of The Day:  Wifi doesn’t work in your town

Department of self-reflection: DB is abiotic (who knew, she sure looks healthy enough)

Department of Immigration: Whenever you leave the ship or come aboard, your “id card” is scanned. So, for example, if you are going kayaking, before you jump in the Zodiac to rendezvous with the kayaks your card is scanned. Same thing when you return from an outing. Today, there were “guards” (they weren’t members of the HebSky crew; immigration officials?) looking at ID cards before allowing you to go up the gangplank to have your id card scanned. Some randomly selected returnees we’re also patted down. Your id card is also your cabin key.

Tea time snacks

Coffee and tea and cookies available 24/7

View from back of boat inside Falkland Islands

Breakfast

Bus to Gypsy Cove

Kayaking cancelled again, too windy in and around Stanley. THB and DB join the morning excursion to Gypsy Cove. Gypsy Cover turns out to a beautiful spot without a lot of animal life.  Two big vans shuttle us over to the site in less than 20 minutes. Other than our cruisers, there seemed to be nobody else around.

Given the cold and wind, THB is wearing long underwear tops and bottoms, a fleece sweater, jeans, the ubiquitous red jacket (handed out when you got on the ship in Puerto Madryn), a buff around his neck and ears, a heavy hat with built in ear muffs, several pairs of socks, a pair of thermal gloves, lip balm and 100 spf suntan lotion, and his water proof pants and dry kayaking suit (just kidding about the dry suit and water proof pants).

 

Abandoned ship rusting away

Magellanic penguin nesting site

Gorse, relative of Scottish Broom

Balsam bog

Trash awaiting pick-up

See the bird?

Geese on top

Shags along the cliff

Mines? no mention of mines?

Crew member cleaning our balcony

THB and DB were told the walk was 20-25 minutes. That was not adjusted to account for the 25 – 30 mph wind in our face. Takes us more like 50 minutes. We’re so flexible that we fall into the first pub we see, the Globe Tavern. The only other people there are two women from the ship – the red jackets hanging over their chairs is a real give-away - and order two fish and chips plates. We decide to take a table for ourselves. {Aside: we had dinner, breakfast and lunch with them the next 3 meals}.

Good news, the meal is excellent. It turned out fish and chips was the only item on the menu.  We share a large bottle of Falklands Beerworks IPA, $34 including tip.

Factoid: The bartender at Globe tells us that none of the pubs in Stanley take credit cards, only British and Falkland pounds or US dollars. We’re prepared, we’re carrying lots of US small denomination bills.

DB goes shopping and THB heads to the local visitor center (our pick-up point for going back to the ship) and buys a wifi card, $7. Wifi is super slow to load the pictures, there won’t be any posts from Stanley. THB gives rest of his wifi card to the next cruiser to enter the visitor center (Vijay).

Stanley visitor center

ID card, front and back

Back on the ship around 10:30, change our gear around (i.e., getting rid of layers), and head to Stanley on the footpath that runs next to the harbor. There’s a harbor security guard at the bridge leading to the footpath and he warned us that the footpath may not be accessible all the way to town so we change our plan and walk regular streets to town.

Dinner with Carol and Lynn, the two women from California at Globe Tavern, both of whom have traveled in this area.

One of the staff was part of an expedition that recreated Shackleton’s 800 nautical miles 16 days journey from Elephant Island to the S. Georgia islands. The recreation was turned into a 3 part BBC/PBS series and tonight was part 1.  THB and DB do not make it up late enough to see the end (or the middle either).

HebSky leaves Stanley around 8 and the forecast is for rough seas for the next 2 days. We have our patches on and take a Dramamine as well. THB’s prediction: a few passengers won’t be joining us for breakfast tomorrow.