We landed at 7:20 British time at Mount Pleasant airfield in the Falkland Islands. In local time that's 4:20 in the morning, so it was dark and I got no views of the island. The huge Boeing rattled and creaked and rain lashed against the window. Nothing else says "Welcome to the Falklands" quite like a shakey cross-wind landing when it's blowing a hoolie. The plane bounced and shuddered to a halt, and there I was - in another imperial outpost, the Falkland Islands. I had reached 52 degrees south, and this was only the start of it. For British expeditions to Antarctica the Falklands are mereley a convenient hopping off point, from where it's close to the Southern Ocean (where I'll be going) or to the antarctic bases of Rothera and Halley, which are operated by the Bitish Antarctic Survey.
We were ushered into the arrival lounge of Mount Pleasant airport, which was undergoing renovation work. Some builders and engineers who I spoke to during our stopover in Ascension told me that they're going to build a Costa's coffee shop and other conveniences to modernise the airport. The passengers disembarked in the usual order - families & women, senior military personell, civilians, then junior soldiers. I felt that it would need more than a coffee shop to shake off the military feel of the place and its procedures to turn the place into a tourist hotspot. Although I'm not sure that is actually anyone's intention. Maybe soldiers like Costa coffee just as much as the next person.
Without any further questions we got a stamp in the passport, loaded the luggage and boarded a bus. A group of Spanish engineers got onboard and found their name on the driver's list just like everyone else, apart from a young, petite Spanish woman who spoke very little English and could not explain who she was, where she was going or who she worked for. But in the end she got a lift too, it would have been unfair to leave her behind at the airport. I guessed that she'd eventually be found on some list, as nobody really comes to the Falklands without some kind of business or someone there knowing about your arrival.
What felt like many hours later, the bus pulled into the capital Stanley. The sight of the ocean made me happy, the rain had stopped and the wind had died down a little too. The houses along the waterfront are stunning and every single one in the front row looked freshly painted. I took note of the street names - Fulmar Road, Krill Lane and so on (later on I found Thatcher Drive, which didn't quite fit the wildlife category). While the close-cropped lawns and red phone boxes might have been a subtle hint at the ownership of these islands, the Union Jacks mounted on cars (all of them Land Rovers), hung up in windows and painted on walls left no doubts.
The bus took us past the offices of the local newspaper, the Penguin News, past Capstan Giftshop, the Globe Taven and a very sturdy church. The church yard is adorned with an arch of 4 gigantic Blue Whale jaw bones (see here for photos). It's awe inspiring to think of the size of the animal whose head was the size of a small building.
Talking of buildings - we were dropped off at what should have been a building of sorts (the word "lodge" was mentioned), but actually it turned out to be a series of interconnected containers. The sort that's flown out to regions struck by natural desasters for emergency shelter. We had arrived at "Lookout Lodge", which in direct contravention of the Advertising Standards Act had no views whatsoever. I didn't mind - in this part of the world, even basic accommodation is an adventure. We would stay there to wait for the previous lot of scientists to demobilise our ship, the RRS James Clark Ross.
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