Falkland Islands - Stanley

Wednesday, 4 March 2020

We arrived in Stanley about 2 PM, and had a short bus tour of the town and nearby environs.

The "narrows", the passage into the inner harbor where Stanley Town is situated.

After the mountains of the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia, the Falklands look flat and green. Stanley stretches along the waterfront for several miles.

There seem to be wrecked ships everywhere you look. This is the Lady Elizabeth.

Stanley has a small airport. The red plane that is landing is one of the air taxis that service the remote farms and islands.

Many Falklanders burn peat for heat. This is a typical peat cut, where peat is cut from the ground in rough cubes.

The cubes of peat are then set aside to dry. This can take a while - perhaps a year. Many homes in Stanley have sheds where peat can be placed to dry under cover.

The "Totem Pole" where signs showing direction and distance to many cities have been placed.

The town museum ("Historic Dockyard Museum") is on the waterfront in the middle of town. Among the thousands of items on display is a nice diorama of Falklands wildlife. Just don't feed the birds!

Lon liked this portable dentist's chair that was ported around the islands by boat and Land Rover.

The classic Stanley Town photo - the whalebone arch and the Christ Church Cathedral. By the time we finished with the museum at 5:30 PM, most of the other sites in town had shut down, so we weren't able to enter the cathedral.

In 1982 Argentina attacked the Falklands, and Britain responded by solidly defeating the Argentine troops. Argentina still considers the Falklands to be theirs, calling the islands the "Malvinas". This sentiment ("The Malvinas are Argentinian") can be found on buses and signs all over Ushuaia - the one above was on our tour bus in Ushuaia. Now that we have visited the Falklands, it is clear that they are so thoroughly British in culture that it would be difficult to imagine them as part of Argentina. Interestingly, geologically it appears that they have broken off southern Africa, not South America.