2014/02 Falklands trip - Falklands arrival |
|||||
Dear All,
This is part two of the story of our trip to Chile and the Falkland Islands. In part one we stayed in Santiago, Torres del Paine, and Punta Arenas. Now we were about to fly to the Falklands for the final two weeks of our trip.
Saturday February 1st
We took a taxi to the airport, not willing to risk the bus in this direction.
LAN Chile’s Falklands flight begins in Santiago and we had to wait for the ongoing passengers to go through Chile’s exit controls before we lined up to do the same, hoping that nobody up ahead had lost their 30-day visa, a loose and scruffy scrap of paper.
The 75 minute flight took us east over Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego and 300 miles of the South Atlantic, all hidden by cloud. The weather cleared as we dropped down to land. We could see lots of islands, mostly flat moorland, with occasional ponds. I didn’t spot any roads or houses.
Some of these paragraphs and pictures are only available via the family's userids and passwords. Family references on this public page have been de-personalized. |
We landed at Mount Pleasant, a military airfield, and there was a person assigned to shepherd us all into the customs shed and make sure that no spies amongst us took photographs of the Welcome to Mount Pleasant sign. We were about last off the plane and with about 150 of us and our luggage crammed into the shed we shuffled along and stayed last.
M met us on the other side, worried we might not be on the plane. I was expecting the traditional boxy Landrover, but M says they’re uncomfortable and he prefers Japanese 4WDs; they are imported a few years old from Japan, right-hand drive of course. Four wheel drive is essential for anyone living in “Camp”. The term has nothing to do with tents; it’s from the Spanish word campo, which means “countryside”. There are about 2500 people spread over the islands and nearly all live on East Falkland and nearly all of those live in Stanley. This leaves a few hundred in settlements in Camp, spread across the 4000+ square miles of East and West Falkland and a few outlying islands. There are over seven hundred islands, most of them unnamed, in a space about 150 miles wide by 80 miles long.
It’s about thirty miles of good gravel road to Darwin. The terrain is rolling grasslands with glimpses of sea and lake. There are no native trees, though the locals have managed to grow a few species with protection from wind and sheep. The Falklands are at equivalent latitude to both London and Newfoundland, but without their own Gulf Stream their climate is closer to that of the latter. The norm is cool and windy, but we were arriving in late summer and hoping for better.
Darwin is on an isthmus which connects the main part of East Falkland with the Lavonia Peninsula. It’s only just over a mile wide, so we could see an inlet of Falkland Sound to the north and Darwin Harbour, an inlet of Choiseul Sound to the south. A couple of turns took us down to the latter and the settlement of Darwin, a half-dozen well separated houses. There were sheep around the road and ducks and geese inside the front gate. The picture is of ruddy-headed geese, wild interlopers at their pond.
Building anything in the Falklands is a challenge, as all materials, even wood, have to come in by boat. Building in Darwin is even more difficult as the “local” hardware store is 80 miles down the road in the capital Stanley. However, that’s the price of isolation and all the locals we talked to seem happy with their way of life.
M said that the small population had its own problems; there is insufficient critical mass for many businesses to survive. The dairy had failed, so now milk was being imported. Export businesses are hampered by shipping costs and delays; our Christmas card, sent airmail, had just arrived after about six weeks. .
We ate and drank very well. There’s no local Falklands wine of course as grapes don’t survive; nor do any arable crops, as the wind and cold and salt are just too much. Root vegetables do best, but we’d noticed that their potatoes had frost damage. This had been a cold summer so far. These berries are diddle-dee, a tart fruit that makes good jam, though there was going to be a poor crop in most places in this cold year.
I’d wondered what the Falklands accent would be like, thinking that it developed under similar circumstances to that of the Newfoundlanders: isolation from the world and from each other with few roads. But it isn’t much different from any English country accent. There are a few words like “smoko” that survive in the Falklands (and Australia) but not in England.
This is a picture of Darwin’s livestock pen and shelter, no longer used, but a welcome windbreak.