2014/02 Falklands trip - Sealion Island hike |
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Saturday February 8th
The day was overcast and very windy, but of course we all went out anyway. Jennie took eight of us to Rockhopper Point in the southwest, leaving us there to walk back to the lodge. We had a rough map and some directions to where the animals may be.
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Sealion Island Rockhopper Point hike |
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Rockhopper Point (7.03) |
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The Point is a stark headland with sheer cliffs and a mix of rockhoppers and shags, similar to what we’d seen on Pebble. The penguins were making their way up and down the cliffs somehow, but we couldn’t see their whole path without getting too close to the edge. The wind was screaming in off the sea, making it difficult to stay upright. This imperial shag was showing its cormorant heritage with a dramatic clifftop flash.
The point is also the home of the memorial to the crew of HMS Sheffield, sunk close to Sealion Island by an Argentinian missile strike.
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Sealion Island hike (18.17) |
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The map showed a coastal trail but it was more of a concept than reality, with cliffs and rocks and channels blocking the way, so we took the inland route. Some of this was an old Landrover track but there were side trails going down to the beaches that got us mired in the tussoc again. In between were 
meadows riddled with penguin burrows. Magellanic penguins would pop out of the tussoc to see what we were up to. We met other hikers, mainly soldiers on day trips dropped off by helicopter; they were moving much faster than us!
We followed a stream that had cut a path through the tussoc. We were close to the beach when there was a mighty roar from the side and a very large dark body came rushing diagonally across our path, turned and roared at us again.
At that moment we understood how sealions got their name. The message was clear too: “This is my patch!” Duking it out wasn’t an option as he weighed a few hundred pounds more than us. We decided to go around. Moving left brought another roar, but going to the right seemed to be OK, except we were now battling the tussock again, worried there might be more sealions. There were but they were all dozing in the tussoc and would just growl if we got too close. We’d been warned not to get between sealions and the sea as they may panic and trample you, but it’s hard to comply when they’re hidden. This one was asleep with a flipper over its 
eyes.
Down
on the beach was a small group of elephant seals, even bigger than the sealions. These are the guys you see having beachmaster battles, but they’re much calmer outside the breeding season. Like the sealions, they were on land to molt.
We also found some of our fellow hikers who’d come down the correct trail, so that was a safer way out, even though we could still hear the sealions snoring around us. As we 
walked back to the track, the rain started but it was mainly blowing from behind us. So we had our heads down, and these were the plants we saw. More veggies than flowers, but the Falklands have no bees and no mosquitoes either.
The tussoc provides a welcome windbreak for birds as well as humans. We saw these kelp geese, unusual as the male is white while the female is highly patterned. We saw
several snipe, similar to those in England. Other birds were the vulture, many tussoc birds, this finch, and the cute teals.
We made occasional forays through the tussoc for views of Rum Island and to Tussoc Pond. The pond was busy with ducks and geese and, surprisingly, a 
group of Magellanic penguins, looking like they were at a penguin resort.
We were in sight of the lodge, but the rain had stopped so we went to the southerly shore and found ourselves a viewpoint above a big group of elephant seals lying on the beach. There was lots of snoring and snorting and stretching and the occasional flipper-toss of sand for sunscreen. They are magnificent animals but pretty 
they are not!
Surprisingly there were sealions up there with us too; I’d met them twice while blundering around, lost in the tussoc. I could see the chutes where they’d 
climbed up from the beach, bad places to be if something spooked them!
We walked along the sands amongst the Gentoos and Magellanics and behind us a great roaring broke out, probably a turf war between the elephant seals, but we were too far away to see. The rain had returned and tea and cake in the lounge sounded better than a hike to the petrel colony.
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Cara cara (0.49) |
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Sunday February 9th
I looked out on an overcast morning, with upland geese outside on the grass and a caracara perched on the roof. There was another young caracara keeping us company at the airstrip, unfazed by all the people, though it did dig its talons in when the plane swept past us.