Monday 14th March; 15th day at sea

Rougher weather today, with quite a lot of presentations, including one from Steve Masson, the taxidermist who had been working at the South Georgia museum. He showed us some slides of the Falklands just so we had an idea of what to expect. Generally it seemed quite pleasant, though the weather seemed unnaturally sunny. One of his slides showed a group of islanders standing by the edge of the road. He’d been on his way to a place, called Elephant Cove, I think, had got a bit lost, and these people wandered over to see if they could help. “I don’t know their names, I’m afraid,” he said; the Governor’s voice from the back said, “Oh, I think that’s so-and-so, and that’s…”. Obviously it’s quite a small place.

Most of the rest of the day was spent plugging across the sea, whilst frantic efforts were made trying to set up a long tour round West Falkland, as well as the short tour of Stanley. The long tour would go south via Mount Pleasant, on to Darwin and Goose Green, and then back via San Carlos – some of the sites from the war. The catch was that there was apparently a party of Argentinians in the Islands as well visiting their cemetery at Darwin. Allegedly this would stop any other trips on “security grounds”, but the Governor said that this was ridiculous, and got things changed. The evening’s entertainment was Don’s photos of Antarctica with a musical accompaniment (from a CD), and we also saw the video that Gary had shot of the walk from Fortuna Bay to Stromness, which gave the people who hadn’t gone on the walk a taste of what it was like.