Bomb Alley - San Carlos

We finally went to San Carlos to see the landing beaches from the conflict.  It is an incredibly long and tiring drive.  It is gravel all the way, and the roads are notorious for accidents!

Anyway, we got there in glorious sunshine, with the weather calm and peaceful, difficult to believe that so many people lost their lives there....

There is a small museum.  The first part is all old Falklands life, whilst the second room is dedicated to the conflict.

There is a cemetery for the soldiers whose bodies remain forever in the soil they died for, I have put the photos of some of them below.

The memorial is laid out in the shape of one of the sheep corrals which can be found scattered all over the islands.

 

And we found the photo above was taken.....

The jetty was used for loading wool bails into ships, and also for landing the troops in 1982.  I'm not sure I would want to walk on it now....

We headed home, enjoying a shepherding demo using quads and bikes.  It does also show a typical Falkland road.

We also stopped at the Chinook crash site at Mount Kent.  This dates back to 1982 again, and was an Argentinian Chinook.

A pleasant day, but very long, it is a 5 hour round trip, even though it is only a 140 mile round trip!

Search and Rescue Exercise and Asda

Simon recently had the chance to take part in a Search and Rescue exercise with the FIDF.  SAR is just one role that FIDF can fulfill within the islands, and practice makes perfect.

Simon arrived at the FIDF hall to find that the sails from the Hugo Boss round the world yacht were laid out in the hall.  The yacht had called in for repairs as they had suffered some damage in a storm.  The main sail was laid out, and in had to be folded back, as it was too big to fit in the hall.  All the others were rolled up at the side waiting for repair, and they all seemed to be in the same state.

We moved down the the school field for a safety brief with the helicopter, trying not to giggle too much when the loady told us to keep clear of the "big bloody spinny thing".  The school field is where the SAR helo lands for all medical emergencies, and is also a designated helo landing site for all helicopters.

Frank being a model for the harness!

We then moved to Wireless Ridge to find the casualty, some had to walk in extended line along the ridge, whilst I had to sweep along the ridge in a zig pattern from top to bottom on a quad!  As ever, more traces of the conflict could be found.

It took us about 30-40 minutes to find the "casualty" so we called for the helo to come and perform the medivac

I videoed the helo coming in to land, and then the take off, they can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL-rKbsAO30

That done, I got home to find our Asda order had been delivered.  This caused much excitement!!  Food prices can sometimes be hard to stomach, and some basic essentials can be in short supply, for example, we have just gone a week with no eggs!!  As I have mentioned before, meat is stupidly cheap, but value range baked beans can be close to £1 a tin.  No wonder that lots of people are ordering through Asda and using a shipping company to send the order down.  We have now joined that club!  You simply do an online Asda order, get it delivered to the shipping company, where they parcel it all up and load it into a container.  We hadn't quite realised how much we had ordered though!!

It took the rest of the day to unpack it and find places to store it all, but what a difference!  This week we have only bought meat and vegetables, and seem to saved £60 this week alone!!  Lots of people say that the first order is the biggest, as then you are just topping up each time, and as we are getting ready for another order, I am certainly tempted to agree!!

Thar she blows.....

We had the chance to go whale watching out in Berkeley Sound.  We had an early start today, 9am on a Saturday!!  We went down to the jetty to board our board, the Speedwell, and off we went.  It certainly gave us a different view of Stanley, one that normally cruise ship passengers can see.

The pictures are not fantastic, as trying to focus and take a decent picture from a boat being rocked by waves is not easy!!

As we set off, a yacht crossed our stern

As we moved further out through the harbour, I was able to photograph Two Sisters at the other end of the harbour.

and here is a picture of our house, it's the wood clad semi detached bungalow in the dead centre of the picture.

As we carried on, we chugged past the Fishery Patrol vessel moored in the harbour

We left the harbour through The Narrows, which gave us our last view of Stanley for a couple of hours.

and on past Ordnance Point, with the old gun visible

 

 As we left the harbour and headed into Port William, there were some ships moored together, one was a tanker.

As we headed further out, we saw Cape Pembroke lighthouse standing out nice and clear

There was a large flock of cormorants, which then followed us for most of the journey.

We headed towards Kidney Island, and we were joined by a school of dolphins.  We could reach down and touch them as they swam along aside us.  I captured some video too.

As we approached Kidney Island, we could see some sea lions on the shore.

We then headed towards Berkeley sound, stopping to view a magellanic penguin colony, including some swimming in the water.

 

We reached Berkeley Sound, and began looking for the whales.  We heard them before we saw them.  When they "blow" for air, it is really noisy, and a plume of water goes 15ft in the air!  The crew did their best efforts to chase them down, and we got incredibly close to the whales.

 

During our trip out, Andrew Shearer, a maths teacher at FICS had been sat at the front of the boat, right on the bow.  We had hit some choppy water, and with a strengthening breeze, he managed to get soaked!

On the way back in, a new ship had taken up station in Port William, the MS Beluga Skysail.  There are several pieces of info and websites about the ship and the Skysail project, and how it save upto 35% of the oil used during a voyage!  Imagine a big boys kite, and you aren't far off the mark!

The rig on the bow is where the skysail is launched from.

As we landed back, we saw another cormorant in the harbour with its beak full of food.

And we arrived back at the jetty, alongside a rotting hulk, and our 3 hour excursion was over