The 100th post: the Falking Penguins

Two generations of Gentoo penguins

A small group of King Penguins.

This is one of two churches with a whale bone arch, the other is in Yorkshire, England.

A comically penguin-shaped tourist posing near the Newspaper offices.

A Memorial to those who lost their lives during the Falkland War.

Our fourth port of call was in the heavily-disputed British Falkland Islands. Or the heavily-disputed Argentinian Islas Malvinas. It depends who asks. Personally, I can't say that I formed an opinion one way or another. On one hand, they are undoubtedly within Argentina's maritime border. On the other hand, at no time during the islands' history did they belong to Argentina. It is one of those situations where it is easy to be swayed by either side of argument. Luckily, I was not there to choose sides. I was there to see penguins. Lots and lots of glorious penguins. In order to this, I had to do the one thing that I had been able to avoid up until now. I was forced to book one of the ship's excursions. By making deals with all the landowners who happen to have penguin colonies on their property, NCL is able to prevent all private operators from offering any kind of penguin tour that fits into the ship's time schedule, so that the options become no penguins (unacceptable), a few penguins (at Gypsy Cove, but little chance of seeing King Penguins) or NCL and lots of penguins. As you can see from the photos, penguins pretty much trump everything else. I chose an excursion to Bluff Cove Lagoon, home to thousands of Gentoo Penguins and a small number of King Penguins. I was primarily concerned with seeing the beautiful King Penguins , so I was questioning Gregory, the tour director, on a near daily basis. "Are the Kings there right now" He would tell me that he had talked to his contacts and that they were. Next day: "How about now? They still there?" I believe that had they not been there on the appointed day, Gregory would have gone out there himself and planted animatronic King Penguins to guarantee himself some peace and quiet. It would have been quite a ride for Gregory and his animatronic penguins since the road to the lagoon is not so much a road, as a jagged series of volcanic rocks, with an occasional wood plank serving as a bridge. To get out to the penguins, we had to take part in a discordant 4x4 caravan. Each driver chose what he thought was the best route through this terrain, except for ours, a charming older gentleman, who preferred conversation and would blurt out things like "Well, it looks like I've got us good and lost now, haven't I?" The visit to the farm also allowed me to meet some other great folks. My favorite was the resident nature guide who could barely suppress his disdain for a local bird, the Falkland Skewer. It preys on penguin chicks and every time one would swoop down towards the colony, I would hear him mutter bitterly under his breath "That's a horrible bird. A horrible, horrible bird." He also mentioned his desire to throw a rock at it, but followed it up with a reluctant "but you have to let nature take its course". I could totally imagine myself having the same internal argument and liked him all the more for it. Then there was the owner of the farm, who welcomed us, the first ship of the season, with a mouth-watering display of sweets. I opted for a home-made diddle-dee jam scone that tasted even better than it looked.

Once our tour was done, we had some time to walk around Stanley, the capital (and some say only) city in the Falklands/ Malvinas. It was like walking around a mini-UK, from the pubs to the fish 'n chips shops to the left-hand side driving habits. Except for this Merry Olde England was awash in penguin souvenirs. I went into one store that was even selling thong panties with pictures of Magellanic penguins on them. Never seen those at Harrod's.

At the end of the day, as much as it annoyed me to have to do one of the ship's overpriced excursions, I was enthralled by the Islands (whatever they may be called), the people and of course, the penguins. It is somewhere I will be making an effort to return to, next time for a longer stay. Latest score NCL:2 Indie Traveller:3

On a separate note, as the title of this post implies (or at least the non- bad pun part of it), this is my hundredth post to this blog, so I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has been so supportive, specially my most loyal commenter, my brother, Roland. I am often surprised by people who tell me they read this blog and I would love to know who you are. Please feel free to stop by the comments section and say hi, maybe have a diddle-dee scone or two.