Stanley, East Falkland Islands

51 54 50 57 were the coordinates we woke up to at 6.30am as we came through “ the narrows” into the deep, natural harbour at Port Stanley.
“Town” was along one Main Street at the front and several streets deep situated up the hill, behind the main road. Brightly coloured houses, an open cemetery and a brick church could be seen as we pulled into the anchorage.
Breakfast was at 7am and zodiac boarding was at 8am. Today we were in the second group but Kate and I ended up literally passenger 1 and 2 as we can actually dress ourselves pretty efficiently.
Once aboard the zodiac it was a 3 minute ride before we disembarked at the solid jetty..... along with the passengers from 3 other cruise ships!!!
It was raining now as we procured a map from the tourist info and headed straight to the Dockyard Museum before the hoards hit.
First into the museum approx 200m from the jetty we managed to get around most of the downstairs exhibits of early life and history of the Falklands before suddenly it was full of yellow, red and blue jacketed tourists.
The poor old lady behind the counter was in such a flap about the fact she didn’t know there were 1000 tourists due today it was v funny as she had no qualms about loudly voicing her discontent!!
Upstairs had lots of stuffed animals and stories of ship wrecks in the area or horror stories of boat trips gone wrong. What was also interesting was the extinct “Warrah” - the Falklands wolf. A 13yr old local boy recently found a warrah skeleton thought to be 6000yrs old.
Back downstairs we watched a short film about the Falklands War from the local children’s points of view- it was all so v sad.
However what is interesting is that the Falklands Islanders are v British and want to be under British Rule. A recent referendum saw. 92% turnout to vote despite the rural isolation of many of the population and a resounding 97% Yes to remain under British jurisdiction ( they also have local governance).
Next it was off further along the waterfront to a World War 1 monument. Along the way we passed a large bronze head of Margaret Thatcher situated at the bottom of Thatcher Drive!
The light drizzle wasn’t pleasant but wasn’t too limiting in our bright yellow quark jacket ( our jackets are definitely the best quality compared to the other ships passenger jackets of which there were 100’s walking around town)
We passed Government House, The Post Office and gift shops before stopping in the supermarket/ cafe for a coffee.
The cafe booths were exactly the same colour as our jackets so we could have easily ‘gone missing’!! The cafe was rammed and although things were quite slow the machine coffee was actually v pleasant ( better than the ship’s which is really shit).
I gave in and paid £5 for 40 mins of WiFi so I could open and respond to my bday messages and was hoping to be able to upload some photos and posts but the signal was too weak and slow.
It was already 12.30pm and we had yet to get to the cemetery or back to the post office to post the postcard to ourselves!
Luckily we heard that the World Explorer had been delayed fuelling up and wasn’t due back into port until 1.30pm at the earliest instead of the last zodiac being at this time.
We walked out of town in the other direction and found the cemetery which was interesting.
Still having time we decided to go for a beer. The Globe Tavern was full of tourists so we walked up the hill to The Victory Pub which looked v dodgy from the outside... and not much better from the inside!! It was busy with locals and tourists and was only as big as someone’s lounge, complete with sticky carpet, Union Jack flags and a pool table!! 2 x half pints cost £3.40 so was actually reasonably priced but we had no idea what we were actually drinking!!
Finally the World Explorer anchored back in the bay and after an orderly queue of yellow jackets we were all ferried v efficiently back to the boat.
Lunch was immediately served at 2.15pm and then we upped anchor and watched on deck as we sailed back out of “the narrows” and into the open ocean south east towards South Georgia.
At about 5pm we were treated to a fin whale and a pod of v active spinner dolphins just sighted from our verandah- v special bday present.
To be honest I really didn’t feel like any dinner at 7.30pm but we went down to the dining room and ended up with the biggest steak dinner followed by a bday cake and a bad rendition of Happy Birthday by the waiters- I was so embarrassed I went as red as a cherry!
We slipped out of the dining room early and just spent the evening in the cabin having an early night after the fresh air this am.
See you Falklands- next stop South Georgia.Read more