Our first port day! We were awakened when the phone rang at 7:50 - one of our Cruise Critic friends telling me the tour was on (I knew that as they replied to my email last night). Glen got up soon after to take a shower, but I slept for a little while longer. We woke up for real about 9 and I dressed quickly to go to Sabbatini's again for breakfast. The seas have calmed down some, and I was able to eat breakfast. After breakfast we grabbed our cameras and parkas and headed to the upper decks to watch the sail into Stanley.
Stanley - the only town on the Falklands, and it's as small as it looks.
As we sailed in, we caught up with our Cruise Critic friends. Because of the nature of our tour, everyone wanted to be on one of the first tenders off the ship. It wasn't a problem for us, because one of our room perks was priority tendering - we'd received tickets yesterday and we just had to show up. Some of our friends were on the first tenders, others as high as 10th. We found the tender area, and hung around until they started letting people on. We did get on that first one.
The tender boats being lowered. They are also the lifeboats, fyi.
It took about 30 minutes to get to the town dock. After leaving the tender, we saw the drivers for Patrick Watts, our tour operator, each holding a sign with the names of 4 people. We'd caught up with Teri and Rod (yes, more CC friends) and decided we'd like to ride with them. We'd thought that as people arrived, Patrick would send them out in groups of 4. Turns out it was preassigned.
A bit about our choice. The biggest attraction of the Falklands is Penguins. Several species make their home their, and a location known as Volunteer Point has one of the largest permanent (year round) colonies of King Penguins, as well as Magellanic and Gentoo breeds. (Kings are the 2nd largest - after Emperors). Volunteer point, however, is remote, and requires roughly 18 kilometers of off road driving, much of it on soft dirt or peat bogs. Tours go out with local drivers and their 4WD vehicles. The tours are offered through the ship, but you can also take them independently. The independent tours run about 1/2 the cost of ship tours. Each vehicle holds 4 passengers. It takes 2.5 hours each way - 1.5 of it offroad on private land (the owners get paid by the tour operators to drive over it).
We were initially assigned to be in Patrick's car, but he left later then everyone else, so we switched to go with our friends. The cars do convoy over there, so once there were enough cars going - we left. Our driver was Dave, a Liverpudlian who came to the Falklands as a Marine, and married a local girl. He was part of the division guarding the Governor's house when Argentina invaded, and was captured. The Argentine's didn't know what to do with POWs so they were sent on a plane to Montevideo (with their families) and then to the UK. After the war, he came back and settled in Stanley since his wife's family was there. He was the police chief for a while, but retired. Now he drives the ambulance for the hospital at night, although since the arrival of a cruise ship doubles the population, there isn't much for him to do. He also drives for Patrick. He told us a lot about the Falklands as we drove out. We saw minefields being swept (people from Zimbabwe come in to do it) and a wrecked Argentine helicopter.
After an hour of driving, we hit the offroad portion. The lead driver picks a track, and the rest follow. The cars get stuck on a regular basis, and they all carry ropes to pull each other out. We had two instances of that on our way to Volunteer point.
Dave told us he was one of only two drivers who haven't been stuck yet. It was almost two hours of overland driving and then we arrived at Volunteer point. As we got close, we saw penguins along the track.
The car finally pulled up and parked near a shack, and we got out. We had roughly 1.5 hours to wander around. We were told not to get too close to the penguins and that they have the right of way. There are thousands of penguins there, and here are some pictures:
These are Kings
A Magellanic in it's burrow
Gentoo Penguins
And the main King Colony.
Once we get home, I'll try to make a more complete album online, but as I've mentioned, the internet here isn't all that fast.
At about 4pm we left, making good time back. Dave's clean stuck record remained intact. He drove us back through town and we saw the hospital (the roof is painted blue so the gulls will think it's water and not poop on it) and the war memorial. There was about a 20 minute tender line, not bad and we got back to the ship around 7:15. We had enough time to drop the cameras at the room and rest for a bit. And Glen was able to do something he never thought he'd do - wash penguin poo off our shoes.
When we arrived, we found a nice surprise waiting for us - our official invitation to the Chef's Table on Feb 8 - one of my goals for the cruise accomplished. We'd had some canapes delivered, so we opened a bottle of Malbec and and had some wine with them.
We didn't do much after dinner.
Would I recommend the tour we took? If you are a penguin fanatic, absolutely yes. Volunteer point is probably the best place to view penguins in the world, and you will see hundreds there. If you're not however, you need to weigh the value of that against the drive. The bottom line is that you will drive roughly 5 hours to spend about 2 hours (when the ship is on time) with the penguins. If you want to see king penguins, then you need to do this, as this is the only place that has them. However, if you just want to see some penguins there are locations closer to Stanley, and they are much cheaper to get to (our excursion was almost 200.00 each, and from the ship it's over 300 each). So keep all that in mind.
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