A little holiday

Sealion Island

Due to the fact that the tourist season hasn’t occurred this summer (I’m told that when a cruise ship arrives in town, up to 5000 people can instantly descend on Stanley; given the total population of the Falklands is a little over 3000, this must be quite an experience) the government of the Falkland Islands (FIG) has rolled out a TRIP scheme, which gives an allowance to anyone living here to take part in tourist activities during what would have been the tourist season. This includes using the gift shops, dining out, FIGAS (the little plane taxi style service that connects the islands together), and the huge array of holiday houses.

This scheme has actually been a great opportunity, not only for us but a lot of people that have lived here for years haven’t had the chance to visit the other islands – they’re pretty expensive usually, some are exclusively for tourists only (cruise ships do deals with them for exclusive access) and in a lot of places, they are actually booked up years in advance. With the scheme, we could afford really to do one decent holiday for the whole family – and so we chose the island that offered the chance to see the most wild life – Sealion Island. It’s one of the most southerly islands, off the East part of the Falklands, and also is catered- extra plus points from our point of view! So we managed to book a few days break in early January.

As I mentioned earlier, due to the remote nature of a lot of the other areas both around camp and the various islands, there is a Falkland Islands Government Air Service – FIGAS plane which connects everyone. The schedule is released (on facebook!) the day before for each of the planes – the first one flying out of Stanley from 8am (this isn’t where the airbridge goes to – that’s at the military base about an hours drive away). Our flight was due to leave around noon – however when we woke up in the morning there was quite a bit of fog – and so flights were delayed an hour in the end to allow the fog to lift.

The plane itself can hold up to 8 people (including the pilot) each with 14kgs of luggage. The seat formation is in 4 rows of 2 – one of the passengers gets to sit up front next to the pilot. That honour was given to eldest Barlow on the way there – who just grinned from ear to ear for the entire of the journey! The pilots are so friendly, really proud of their planes and so keen to give you a great experience – both seemed to spend a lot of our journey looking for the wildlife to show us! I’ve never been on such a small plane, and once we were in the air it seemed to take a little while to level out – at some points the plane felt like a leaf blowing in the wind, there were quite a few ‘airbumps’ as middle Barlow called them and my tummy felt like it was in a washing machine for a lot of it! Once settled, we were treated to our first birdseye view finally of Stanley. We were all excitedly pointing out all the buildings we recognised already from our time here and waved to all the people we imagined were around! As we were flying South, we skirted round most of the land, got a beautiful view of the beaches we had recently discovered, enjoyed gazing over some seals lounging on the sand and headed towards Sealion island (the pilot kindly tilted the plane to allow us a better view – I think this was the point Chris went green!). We had to drop two passengers off on the way at Bleaker island – it looked beautiful and certainly something we will be wanting to visit in the future – I think two families live there in total, with all the wildlife you come to expect here – remote paradise. Dropping off the other guests was an opportunity for us to take off again – which was a little less bumpy this time, and only a short hop to Sealion island. The total flight took us 40 minutes. The ‘runway’ at sealion was really short, which meant like it felt that the pilot pretty much pulled up in the air as much as he could, I’ve got to say landing there on the grass airfield was pretty cool.

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The first view of sealion was the penguins! I don’t think I have ever seen quite so many penguins all in one place before – penguins were all congregating right next to the lodge – the only settlement on the island (made up of the main house and then two smaller houses for staff). The lodge had a chalet feel to it; you are welcomed at the conservatory style door, where everyone leaves their shoes and coats, and then free to move about the building. There were two lounges (one was equipped with a tv and various games, we tended to keep the kids in there) and then another lounge which had a bar attached (honesty bar – you just kept your own tab). Tea and coffee were available all day, and most importantly to the girls – smoko was available in the afternoons. (No, the girls haven’t taken up smoking whilst we have been away – its what they call afternoon tea out here, apparently its an Auzzie thing?!). The food was served in the dining room – and was absolutely amazing for the entire visit, three course meal for tea each night which the girls were very keen to become accustomed to!

Our first afternoon we went out for a walk to get our bearings – there’s a nice fairly short hour long route walk marked out with stars on rocks which gives you a great tour of the east part of the island. The first part of the route took us past the huge colony of Gentoo penguins, who all seemed to be on their way back to their chicks along a path called ‘penguin highway’. Whilst the pictures look great, and yes it is amazing to see so many penguins all in one place, when you are suddenly downwind of all of these penguins, it smells a.w.f.u.l!! So the walk took us past the penguins, along the beach back round to the beach to the East of the island which had loads of Elephant seals on. This time of year, the pups have grown and begun to venture out into the water and so a lot of the females were just lounging on the beach, with a few males trying to keep them all together in their own hareem – meaning there was a lot of shouting and wailing going on! Walking back up to the lodge, there were loads of burrows of Magellanic penguins, as well as other nesting birds – an angry Skua kept on telling us we were too near to her nest!

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The next day we walked to another beach which again had loads of Elephant seals lying around on – farther down the coast there was a rocky outcrop, which was known as the Orca pool. This was a sheltered pool that the younger elephant seals liked to play about in, and we spent a nice hour watching them play in the pool and practise their fighting skills. The name of the pool is from the fact that, in times of high tide, the Orca are able to get into the pool and attempt to get their dinner…which actually happened the afternoon we were here, but unfortunately missed it!

In the afternoon we were given a lift to the Southern tip of the island (obvs off-road – which middle B absolutely hates!!), where the Rockhopper colonies were. These are easily my favourite penguins – I absolutely love their crazy eyebrows! There was apparently also a lone macaroni penguin in there – but we had no way of finding it – I was never good at where’s wally! We spent a lovely time watching the rockhoppers as they made their way from one side of the rock to the other – and got a great video as they all waddled in formation in front of us, ‘hopping’ onto different rocks as they joined the other group.

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Having seen almost all of the wildlife available on the island, our last day was spent determined to see the Orca. We had missed the mother killing the elephant seal to give to her two calves the day we were at the rockhoppers, and so were worried that there wouldn’t be another sighting whilst we were there. But we camped out at the Orca pool for the majority of the day with a picnic (kindly supplied by the kitchen). After 4 hours of sitting watching the pool the girls had long given up and were playing in the tussac and we were at serious risk of sunburn so we headed back to the lodge for smoko. One last ditch attempt before tea time, and we were rewarded! The mother Orca was back with her two babies, and treated us to a show of them swimming up and down the bay for a good hour. It was completely mesmerising just watching them in the waves, we were thrilled we had managed to see them! Everyone staying at the lodge had managed to get to see the Orcas and so tea that evening was a happy buzz of people excitedly recounting what they had seen that day.

The plane came for us at 10am the following morning, middle B had the joy of sitting up front this time, and proceeded to chew the pilots ear off as she listed all the things to him that we had seen – they did try and look out for some whales for us, but unfortunately, we were unlucky this time. We landed back in Stanley to a smooth bump, and felt that we had had a thoroughly good break away. Now all I’ve got to do is make sure I claim it all back on the TRIP scheme, if I can find all my receipts…!