Date: 2nd Jan, 2011
Sunrise: 4.38
Sunset: 22.15
Very bright sunlight woke us up early at around 6.30am. We were still surrounded by some islands whose terrain looked quite like those which we visited the previous day. Today was the day to visit Stanley which is the capital of Falkland Islands. Stanley is a small town with about 2,050 residents. There are very few brick houses and all the remaining have bright colorful rooftops. We even joked that the government might regulate the choice of colors to paint the rooftops. We did take Larry's suggestion seriously and prepared our backpacks/clothing for a run along the coast of Stanley. The visitor center at Stanley is run by 3 ladies who were our main point of contact for any activities which we might want to do in the city. There are a wide variety of choices that matches the tastes of people of all ages. There is a museum, wrecked ships, battlefield tour, penguin colony tour, bars/pubs and nice english bakeries. There is also a house of some guy whose backyard is filled with whale bones along with slogans against whaling in this region.
We decided to start the day in an unconventional way and opted for jogging on our own to Gypsy cove which is nicely located over the cliff of a white sand beach with some penguins lazing around. It has some beautiful cliffs and we get to see the birds (red shags) nesting on them. During our jog we came across the Elizabeth ship wreck which looked nicely stationed over a platform of sand close to an iron bridge over the shallow part of the ocean. After a nice long 5km run we arrived at the cove and walked around reading up about the unique vegetation, flora and fauna normally found in this region. There is also a big gun that was stationed here during World War II to keep the Germans away from invading this English territory.
The white sand beach next to the cove looked very inviting but the beach is off limits for tourists. During the 1982 Falklands war, Argentina planted 134 minefields to blow up the English army. After losing the war to the British, Argentina cleverly destroyed the papers that kept a record of the location of these minefields. Only few of these have been discovered so far. After a quick walk we jogged back to the downtown for some fish n chips over German beer for lunch. Did get to buy a whole lot of souvenirs for friends along with lots and lots of bird stamps from Falkland Islands to add to my collection. I was quite pleased with my purchase. We walked around town clicking pictures of colorful rooftops and flowers along the main street. For us Stanley brings out the image of houses with colorful rooftops and each resident owning at least 2-3 big range rovers.
Now for some ranting...
Today is our 4th day on the trip and we have gradually gotten into the habit of arriving 10-15 min late for dinner. On a ship where the average age of passengers is around 45-50yrs, we can expect most of them to be quite disciplined and stick to the posted dining hours. The dining room on the ship has exactly the same capacity as the number of passengers. We arrived late and the dining hall was full with very few scattered seats being available. We have about 6 passengers from Japan and they usually sit at a separate table aloof from the rest of us. They seem to go through extra pains of bringing a rice cooker on board to cook the rice noodles and share it among themselves as an appetizer. With no other seats available in the dining room we ended up sitting at their table after asking the gentleman at the table if it was alright. He was quite polite and had no problem with it. After a little while four other Chinese comrades arrived at the table claiming their seats. Suddenly we were the intruders and it was quite embarrassing to see everybody completely panic with each of them muttering in a language we don't understand. One woman went to the waitress to complain while the other men started talking among themselves. We politely offered our seats and agreed to shift to the next table where a very friendly canadian couple gladly made space on the table to accommodate us. Unfortunately the dining room has a fixed number of chairs and all of them are latched to the floor in preparation against the swaying due to rough winds. The Chinese couple stood there staring at our table and not accepting the emptied seats. Wtf?? We are just there for dinner, let us just have food and not complicate things with all this fuss over such a simple matter. The whole episode was quite embarrassing and we ended up finishing the dinner with a note to self - avoid the troublesome Chinese table and try to get to dinner on time. It turned out that they were quite polite with us during the rest of the trip.
The day has been quite tiring due to the 8k run in Stanley this morning. Andy has been planning on getting me to watch Star Wars for quite some time now. We plan on watching the first of the many Star Wars movies before we hit the bed. Adios!
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