Tourism

This is the Routemaster bus that has just arrived in the Falklands after being shipped from the UK. It is going to be used for tourist trips around Stanley.

When the cruise ships come in for day trips, or flights for longer holidays the population of Stanley can increase very quickly.

There are a lot of wildlife trips available or trips to the battlefield sites. Coaches can take people to the more popular sites, but the more adventurous can go off road to places like Volunteer Point to see some very large penguin colonies.

A lot of the smaller islands have self-catering or full board lodges where people can have a relaxing time watching the wildlife or taking guided tours.

There is a golf course in Stanley, but it might be a little different than people may be used to. There are good hotels and guest houses in Stanley itself. There are a range of restaurants, serving local food where possible. There are lots of gift shops in Stanley which sell local goods such as wool & glass.

The weather during the summer is quite mild. The annual rainfall is lower than for London, and the Falklands are as far away from the South Pole as London is away from the North Pole. The wind does keep the temperature down sometimes but it is no where as cold as people may think, especially if they remember any pictures from the 1982 conflict.






This is the excellent museum in Stanley. The house itself was built for the Argentinean airline company (LADE) manager when they had an office here just before the 1982 conflict. It housed the Argentinean commander during the conflict and then the British Commander in Chief used it as his house after the conflict until the military base was built at Mount Pleasant, about 35 miles away.

The museum covers a wide range of Falklands history from its initial settlements by the English and French, travel to and from the Islands, the 1982 conflict, and life in Stanley and camp. Any part of the Falkland Islands outside Stanley is called camp. The museum also contains displays on the local wildlife found in the Islands and is well worth a visit,

The Falkland Islands does not have....

McDonalds
Burger King
Estate Agents
24 hour supermarkets
Traffic jams
Roundabouts
Traffic lights
Crowded trains / buses / tubes
Serious crime

.....which is a very good thing of course.

TV & Radio

In Stanley there is only one terrestrial TV station, BFBS 1. This is the military run TV station that broadcasts a mixture of BBC / ITV / Channel4 & Sky programmes. BFBS1 (British Forces Broadcasting Service) is more of a family station. BFBS2 is more of a "lads" station and is available only at the military base.

BFBS also run 2 radio stations that we can pick up. There is also a local radio service called FIRS, Falkland Island Radio Service, they broadcast their own programmes, intermixed with a few Radio 4 and Radio 5 programmes. I have been on FIRS for a broadcast myself.

There is cable / satellite TV available but there is a bit of local debate about this at the moment. You can get over 40 stations by cable if you so wish from a local company. There is an issue as to whether you are allowed to own a receiver that can pick up programmes broadcast from another country. There have been a couple of cases recently where people have bought receivers quite legally in Chile but have been stopped from bringing them into the Falkland Islands. This has caused a few discussions in the local press, the "Penguin News".

The BBC World Service is also available so I can still listen to the Archers if I want to, or listen to live football from Radio 5. We are 3 hours behind GMT so I usually can listen to football commentary on the way home from work.

Cricket match

They do play cricket in the Falkland Islands. There is an annual competition called the "South Atlantic Ashes". A team from Stanley plays a team from the military base at Mount Pleasant.

There is no cricket pitch in Stanley but there is an artificial pitch at the military airbase. I have taken a photograph of us playing, but I had to be very careful not to photograph any of the "secret" buildings in the distance. It is probably the most southerly cricket pitch in the world.

I missed the first match because I was on the battlefield tour but I umpired the last two matches. This year the military won 3 - 0. They were a bit fitter than the Stanley team and had a couple very useful players. The matches are played in a competitive, but good natured spirit. They have a presentation ceremony at the end, where the Ashes trophy is presented to the winning team. I got a little memento for umpiring the matches.

Radio broadcast

I have left a small impression in the Falklands. The local radio station has a weekly program on social & medical issues where staff from the health and social departments give a interview on a topic that may be of interest to the local people.

There is a emergency blood donor panel in the Falklands and I have done a little work while I have been here keeping it updated and ready for use if required. There are about 100 locals on the panel who we can call upon to donate blood if the normal supply we get from the UK runs out for any reason. It is very rarely used, but it is a essential thing to have just in case.

I thought it would be a good idea if I went onto the radio to tell people about how we run the panel. The chief medical officer was more than happy for me to go on the radio, since he meant he didn't have to take his turn that week.

I didn't want to do it live, but I spent a good half hour having an interview which was then then recorded and edited. I was very nervous at first, and kept repeating the same phrases, but quite enjoyed it in the end, and would not mind doing it again. It is a very friendly interview, you give the person the questions you want asked. I didn't actually here the broadcast, but a couple of people said it was fine, and it actually sounded like I knew what I was talking about.

The interview also got published in the weekly newspaper "The Penguin News".

Chinook wreckage

The wreckage of a Argentinean Chinook helicopter that was bombed on the ground not far outside Stanley. A lot of it has been removed by souvenir hunters. The titanium metal is still rust free even after being in the open for almost 25 years.

Even as you drive along the round from Stanley to Mount Pleasant you can see the placements where the Argentinean soldiers camped in the hillsides. If you go further a field you can still see the remains of the slit trenches dug into the ground.

More pictures...

The landscape of the Falklands is a mixture of Dartmoor, in Devon and the Scottish Highlands.

The soil is very peat based, which makes a very good source of fuel, and is still widely used outside Stanley.

Getting around the countryside is difficult, there are very few paved roads and it is very easy to get bogged down if you try to go cross country.



Stanley is twinned with Whitby in England. The Falkland's motto is "Desire the right". Stanley is a very English town with English goods in the shops.
I still say it could do with a Starbucks or similar on the harbour front for visitors and locals alike.

The nearest McDonalds is over 500 miles away, which may not be a bad thing in a way.

Some king penguins from Volunteer Point. Not as cute as the gentoo penguins.


This is the skull of a sperm whale, in the garden of one of the houses in Stanley. There used to be a lot of whale & seal hunting further south in South Georgia, but thankfully most of it has stopped now. You can sometimes see killer whales (orcas) off the coast of some of the islands when they are hunting for sealions or penguins.















The countryside or "camp" can be very bleak & farms isolated. Most communication is by 2 metre radio, very similar to the old style CB radio. There is a mobile phone network now, but its range does not cover much of the areas outside Stanley or Mount Pleasant military base.

I am going on a battlefield tour tomorrow which should be interesting.

At the moment my job here ends on the 16th Feb when my replacement arrives.

Cruise ships...

On a nice sunny day this is the view of the hospital, the building with the light blue roof. It is a fairly modern building after the last one was destroyed by a very suspicious fire in the 1990's.

The field in front of the picture is the football pitch, used by both the community and the school, there are also cricket nets there, which I attend from time to time.





Apart from fishing the biggest source of income is tourism. Cruise ships are a regular sight, both in Stanley Harbour like in this photo or in the deeper water in the bay just outside the harbour. The QE2 is an annual visitor, as will be the even larger Queen Elizabeth next season. Once the passengers are ashore they either wonder the streets of Stanley or go on day excursions to battlefield sights or to see wildlife.

We tend to get the very large ships on their round the world trips or smaller vessels on their way down to South Georgia and beyond.

The population doubles in size in a very short space of time. Sometimes the tourists are surprised that the locals speak such very good English and that they have computers and electricity down here. There are plenty of gift shops for the tourists to visit, but there is a bit more that could be done, the jetty where they land and the harbour side itself is not the most appealing and does not give the best first impression of Stanley.


The view along the race course with Mount Longdon, Tumbledown & Two Sisters in the background. Typical Falkland countryside, a mixture of Dartmoor terrain with the peat bogs of Ireland or Scotland. Upto the 1980's peat was a major source of fuel, and still is in the countryside outside Stanley.

Work is going fairly well. There is enough to keep me occupied. I have given myself my own pet project to do in my spare time. The Christmas / New Holiday was probably a bit too long. We only have one TV channel to watch and no DVD player now. It is good experience to come here for a few months, and I would come here again given the choice. I am not sure I would want to spend all year out here, not unless I got hold of cable TV and had internet access.