Wednesday, February 21, 2018- Cruise Day 29; Falkland Islands

Wednesday, February 21, 2018- Cruise Day 29; Falkland Islands

During the night we noticed several brightly lit boats in the distance as we made our way towards the Falklands. As we arrived a the Falklands, we saw some beat up looking ships coming into port with unusual rigging all along the sides.  It turns out these were the squidding boats we had seen the night before.  They appear to be flagged out of Korea and Taiwan for the most part.  We managed to arrive in the Falklands with calm seas and overcast skies.  The ship anchored outside Stanley Harbor and began launching the tenders.  We had tickets for an excursion to the Bluff Cove Penguin Rookery meeting at 9:45. We had breakfast in the dining room and then dressed for cool and windy weather.  We were told the tender ride to Stanley would take 30 minutes each way, but because the water was calm, it only took about 15 minutes for our tender to make it to shore.  Once off the tender, the wind did feel cold.  Fortunately, there was a small shelter where we waited while they organized our tour group.  First we were loaded into minivans of 16, which took us to the end of the pavement about 20 minutes from the tender dock.  Then we loaded up 4 to a Land Rover for the last 20 minutes of our trip, which started on gravel roads, and then ended up going cross country over peat and rock covered hills to the beach where the Bluff Cove penguin rookery was located.  

As promised, there were lots of Gentoo penguins, which can be readily identified by their brushy tail and white patches around their eyes.  There was also a small colony of much larger and more colorful King penguins.  It looked like there was about a dozen nesting pairs.  The King and Gentoo penguins don’t live in any sort of nest or burrow, but lay their eggs on the soft peaty ground and they live in tight groupings for defense.  The rangers placed white flags around the penguins to give us guidance on how close we could approach without upsetting them.  

There are molting adults as well as mature adults and chicks of varying sizes.  The King penguins are quite a sight because they are much larger than the Gentoos, and also much more colorful with their jet black and bright orange markings on their heads.  They also have much longer and more slender beaks.  Their chicks look like cute huge brown blobs, but there was one small chick that the ranger said had just hatched a day before. We could see some of the adults regurgitating to feed the chicks.  

There were a thousand nesting pairs of the Gentoo penguins, so they seemed to cover the beach and hills.  There were also a bunch of molting Gentoo penguins right next to the King Penguins, so these two species don’t seem to have a problem with being in close proximity.  Many of the Gentoo penguins lay prostrate on the ground in awkward and silly looking poses, apparently just relaxing.  

There was a beautiful beach where we could see Gentoo penguins riding waves in from the bay.

The excursion ended with tea at a tiny but cute tea house next to the penguin colonies, where there was a vast array of cakes, cookies and scones that we struggled to get through before our Land Rovers returned to take us back to the buses.  

We opted to get dropped off at the outskirts of town, and saw the local museum and church.  It only takes about 20 minutes to walk the length of town back to the tender dock.  

The winds had picked up considerably by the time we returned to the dock, and we could see white caps building in the harbor.  The ride back was a lot slower and wetter than the morning ride.  Water would splash in through the open doors of the tender as it crashed through waves. It’s a good thing we were wearing our rain coats.  When we got to the ship, another tender was stuck on the landing and had to be manually moved because it was having trouble with its port side motor.  That limited the tender service to just 3 working tenders.  We ended up staying late because it took so long to get all the passengers back to the ship with the rough weather and reduced number of tenders.  Instead of leaving at 5:30PM, the ship ended leaving more like at 7PM. 

We did make it back in time to attend the 3:45PM afternoon trivia.  It as a Paranormal themed trivia and we ended up teaming up with Fred and Bob.  We ended up with 16/20, while there were two teams with 17/20 that was settled with 3 tie breakers.  The first was which explorer claimed to see mermaids, but reported they were not as attractive as their paintings? A. Merriweather Lewis, B. William Clark, C. Christopher Columbus, D. Sir Edmund Hillary.  Of course both teams picked C.  Then he asked them to guess his month of birth, and they both ended up 4 months off.  Finally he asked for the day of his birthday, and one team guessed it right.  

We had dinner in the dining room and managed to score another Chocolate Journey dessert.  We watched the last part of the Showtime presentation of Gary DeLena, who is a guitarist/comedian, and decided we didn’t need to go back and see his whole show.

We finished the evening with the 7:45PM Music Trivia.  None of our usual team showed up so Gary and Angela came over and teamed up with us, and Ed came over from his usual team to join our team for the evening. We managed to win that with a score of 26/40.  There was some controversy because we had given the team we scored credit for writing Michael Jackson when the artist was the Jackson 5, and they didn’t give us credit.  Ultimately Walley, the quizmaster granted credit for either Michael Jackson or Jackson 5, securing our win.  It was especially awkward because Ed had defected from that team to ours. The prize was a bottle of champagne, which we offered to the Ed’s usual team, but they didn’t want it. Angela ended up taking the champagne home.  

We retired to our stateroom for some TV before retiring for the night.  Tomorrow, we are supposed to cruise around Cape Horn, but our late departure from the Falklands may place us there near sunset, or shortly after dark, so that will be a disappointment to do scenic cruising in the dark.