Although we were promised a sunny day, it was still grey & windy as we continue through Drake Passage. Room service breakfast, as the have another brunch today. Managed to do our mile walk in but it was *very* cold and windy up there. Well at least we have reached positive temperatures (6°), so I've ditched the thermals.
The Captain tells us that we are chasing a "nasty" storm, with an even bigger one coming at us from the west. Our plan is to keep up the speed to reach the shelter of the Falklands sooner rather than later.
Day 13
Big day ahead of us today as we have a private tour to Volunteer Point to see penguins with Patrick Watts - more on that later. As we are due to arrive at 7.30 and as this is a tender port and as Patrick (& all the other tour operators) want us ashore on the first tender, we set the alarm for 5.30 - horrors!
We also had room service breakfast at 6.30 and were down on deck 3 for the tender platform by 7.20. And then we had to wait for around 40 minutes before the rendering started.
To be fair to Azamara, there is no priority for ship's tours or anyone else, simply first come first on board. We were happy to get ashore around 8.30 and met Patrick, who quickly assigned us to our 4WD, along with a lovely couple from Sydney.
Our driver/guide was Richard and he was fantastic. Briefly, he is British and came to the Islands as a traveling teacher in 1977. He now owns a 13,000 acre farm with his wife Toni, who was our convoy leader. Toni is a native Falklander and everyone seems to be inter related - not surprising as the residential population is just 3,000 (plus 2,000 UK military).
Our convoy was 12 strong & we were vehicle #2. There were 3 (or 4) other companies running the same trip with similar numbers and different prices (Azamara was USD798, ours was USD370). The first hour was on public roads (mainly gravel) but then we entered private land for the remaining 1.5 hours of true off-roading. The land on the Falklands is peaty and boggy, so to say it was an interesting excursion would be an understatement.
On arrival at Volunteer Point we were amazed at the number of penguins. Basically there were 2 types, the Gentoo & King. They have their separate breeding areas, although adjacent to each other but they were simply wandering around ignoring us to a large extent. What was amusing were the penguins amongst the sheep & the geese, all living in happy co-existence.
Most of the Gentoo chicks were lazing around, being fed & preened by their parents. The Kings however were all in different stages, with some still sitting on eggs, some sitting on chicks, some moulting and some still fluffy and brown.
Literally there were thousands and we were told that at one stage the Kings were almost extinct in this area, but now their number has increased 1000 fold. All the nesting areas are well away from the shore (probably 1/2 km), where most of their predators would come from.
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| Mum or Dad feeding it's chick |
Having taken the obligatory 100+ photos we went down to the beautiful white sandy beach and were intrigued with the various penguins (usually in pairs) waddling down to the sea, diving in, surfing the waves and coming back up the beach, presumably having eaten some fish, to feed their young. Once again, they were unperturbed by our presence, but we were all very respectful and kept our distance.
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| A couple of Gentoo back from fishing |
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| Dad's been told to get some food |
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| Same story for this King penguin |
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| This way please! |
There were also Magellanic penguins further along the beach, but this area is closed, mainly as these ones actually burrow to nest, and were still nesting. All in all we had 1.5 hours amongst the birds and we returned to our vehicle for a packed sandwich lunch and then the reverse trip back to the ship, including a "town" tour. As you can imagine, Stanley itself is *really* small, so that did not take long. As a bonus, we were also give a USB drive with some 300 professional photos of wildlife etc. in the Falklands.
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| Part of our convoy |
As I said, Richard is a farmer, but he has of course a wealth of knowledge of the island and many, many amusing and interesting anecdotes. His farm is roughly 50km out from Stanley, and a trip to "town" is well over an hour and a half.
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| Typical terrain - in the Goose Green area |
Patrick Watts is also famous as he was the announcer on the local radio when the Agentinian military stormed the station and demanded at gunpoint that he read the occupation document (he refused until they put the gun away!)
It seems that everyone who went out to Volunteer Point (no matter which tour company) had a great experience and generally everyone (including Captain Carl) was pleased with our port of call. Ships calling at the Falklands have just a 50% chance of being able to get passengers ashore - our wind & sea was just perfect.
Day 14
Thankfully it is a sea day, so we are relaxing. We had been promised a sunny day, but that has been rescheduled for Monday (it always seems to be on the horizon but not quite here!). It is much warmer today, around 17° with quite a bit of wind as we found out when we did our walk. Tomorrow, in Puerto Madryn we have an expected high of 34°, so certainly the winter woolies have been packed away.
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