The journey south - Falkland Islands

The journey to Bird Island began at RAF Brize-Norton in Oxfordshire, with a 2am wake-up call to catch the 6am flight to the Falklands. The flight is a thrombosis-inducing 18 hours, and the plane has to stop and re-fuel at Ascension Island. We passed the time in the Ascension airport international transit lounge, affectionately known as ‘The Cage’; a roughly 10m x 10m square of runway tarmac surrounded by chain-link fence. Some picnic benches had been provided, which made it more comfortable than a CIA special-rendition holding pen, but only just. Ascension Island is well within the tropics and the blistering midday sun beat down on us from a cloudless sky, causing us to sweat furiously inside our Antarctica-proof clothing. Nine hours after leaving Ascension, we touched down at Mount Pleasant airport, Falkland Islands. It was extremely windy, and the plane veered excitingly from one side of the runway to the other as we landed. Then for the second time that day we crossed the tarmac to a terminal building, except this time it was dark, cold and we were whipped by ferocious winds. There was no question about it, we were now South.

Passing some quality time in Ascension.

Stanley, Falkland Islands.

On the 10th of January Falkland Islanders celebrate Margaret Thatcher Day

Our ship was not due to leave Stanley for a few days, so we passed the time by seeing the sights. Most tourists come to the Falklands to see wildlife, particularly the 800,000 odd penguins that live here. Naturally I was keen to see some penguins, despite the fact that I will be seeing nothing but penguins for the next two and a half years, so we immediately set off to Gypsy Cove, the closest penguin colony to Stanley. Contrary to what you might expect, the Falkland Islands have a lot of beautiful, white, sandy beaches, of which Gypsy Cove is one. Unfortunately beautiful, white, sandy beaches are an excellent place for invading armies to land, so during the 1982 Falklands conflict many of the beaches on the islands were liberally covered with landmines. The conflict lasted just 10 weeks, but now almost 30 years later the mines remain, and there are currently 117 minefields in the Falklands waiting to be cleared. There is a faint silver lining to this cloud, however. Penguins are not heavy enough to detonate landmines, so the penguins that live on the mined beaches do so entirely undisturbed by humans.

 The legacy of the 1982 conflict lives on.

Falklands beach holiday.

Yes, it was very, very cold.

Gypsy Cove still carries landmines, but despite the barbed wire fences and skull-and-crossbones warning signs, it was starkly beautiful; all wind-blown sand dunes and hardy vegetation bathed in bright sunshine. We followed a path round the edge of the beach and pretty soon spotted a penguin – our first penguin! – a Magellanic penguin that was idly hanging out next to his burrow. As a barrage of cameras was whipped out and started clicking frantically away, he shuffled inside.

A Magellanic penguin; this one was less shy.

Not content with just one penguin experience, the next day we booked an excursion with Kidney Cove Safari Tours to see some rockhopper penguins. Kindey Cove Safari Tours is run by a couple, Adrian and Lisa, who, in between ferrying tourists to see penguins, also find time to run a 10,000 acre farm with 3000 sheep and a couple of hundred cattle. Like many landowners in the Falklands, Lisa and Adrian have penguin colonies on their land, and drive tourists out to see them to supplement their income from farming. “Tourists pay more than sheep,” Lisa explained to us on the drive over. It took a good hour to reach the colony, most of which was spent bouncing around in the back of a landrover as Lisa piloted it across rough, featureless moorland. All of a sudden we were at the penguin colony- a huddle of several hundred rockhoppers on a patch of rock at the top of a precipitous bank which plunged down into the sea. The rockhoppers were entirely unconcerned by our arrival and by the barrage of cameras. As we snapped away, they mooched, and rockhopper penguins are world-class moochers.

Moochin'

A rockhopper, living up to its name.

I wonder what they're staring at...

Rockhopper breeding season was just starting, so lots of the penguins were mooching in pairs. Some pairs were displaying to each other by throwing their heads back and letting out a throaty, braying call whilst waggling their head from side to side. This showed off their magnificent eyebrow tufts to the greatest effect. One penguin was going to even greater lengths to impress his partner. At regular intervals he would hop out of the colony onto the surrounding grass, pick up a tiny piece of goose poo in his beak, then hop back and present it to his lady, presumably to be used as nesting material.
“Hi honey! I’ve got a surprise for you!”
“Oh God. I hope it’s not more goose crap.”
“It’s some goose poo! I think it will be excellent material for building our new home!”
“How did I end up with this idiot? I hope we’re not one of those species that mates for life.”
“There’s tonnes of this stuff lying around, and it’s absolutely free! I can’t understand why everyone isn’t collecting it.”
“Perhaps because they’ve heard of toxoplasmosis.”

Antarctic pre-deployment training (part II)

After a week of lectures and first aid we were whisked away from the beautiful, comfortable, three-hearty-meals-a-day surroundings of Girton to begin the second part of our training; field skills, which were appropriately enough being taught in a field in Derbyshire.

We began with some ropework, specifically how to walk across a crevassed area. To do this one needs to be harnessed and roped together with another person. The two people then walk some distance apart so that if the person in front plunges into a crevasse, the person behind has time to bury their ice-axe into the snow and hang on for dear life. There is some debate among the experts over whether it is better to be the person who plunges or the person who doesn’t plunge, but this is a debate I will probably never learn the answer to since there are no crevasses on Bird Island. We also learned what to do should you find yourself dangling on the end of a rope halfway down a crevasse (climb back up it), or supporting your friend who is dangling on the end of a rope halfway down a crevasse (pull them back out). To pull them back out you construct an ingenious mechanism called a z-pulley which requires a substantial quantity of rope, some carabiners, a couple of rope ascending devices and five pulleys. The upshot of this is that, when walking through a crevassed area, you need to carry more gadgets on your belt than Batman.

Alistair dangles over the Derbyshire countryside, pretending it is a crevasse.

Mike explains the theory behind 'hanging on for dear life' to Katie.

The next part of field training was a demonstration of a primus stove, an essential piece of Antarctic field kit which has not changed much since the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration. Scott probably warmed his last mug of Bovril over a primus stove. Shackleton no doubt fried his seal steaks over one too. Primus stoves burn paraffin, the advantage of which is that it is not particularly flammable and therefore very safe. Should you spill paraffin all over the floor of your tent and then drop a lit match into it nothing much would happen. The disadvantage of paraffin is that it is not very flammable and primus stoves are therefore a bit of a bugger to get going. First the stove is pumped up to raise the pressure in the fuel compartment, then some meths is added to a little cup around the pipework and burned to heat up the fuel inside (this is the ‘priming’ part). After repeating this process several times the paraffin in the pipes should be hot enough to burn and the stove can be lit. However, if the paraffin is not burning properly it will produce carbon monoxide and kill you. So on the plus side it is unlikely that you will accidentally burn down your tent, but on the minus side there is a good chance that you will accidentally poison yourself. No wonder they called it the Heroic Age.

Learning some essential field skills.

Another part of the field course was ‘how to find a fallen colleague in a blizzard’ training, for which you need a bunch of people, a rope and some goggles painted white on the inside. The goggles were to simulate the blizzard, so would not be required in a real-life blizzard situation. One person was sent to hide among the heather and then the rest of us had to find her, without peeking. The main thing I learned from this exercise was that if you are going to look for someone in a blizzard then you really ought to discuss your strategy first rather than just starting, otherwise you are nothing more than a bunch of blind people staggering around holding onto a rope. I had very little idea what was going on during the ‘rescue’. Apparently we were tracing a series of arcs and semi-circles to cover a large area of ground, but I quickly grew disoriented and had no idea where we had been or where we were going. Communication along the rope was poor, with bellowed instructions from either end quickly dissipating in the wind. We did eventually find the casualty, but only because the instructors started giggling when one of us nearly bumped into her, and I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t happen in a real rescue situation.

Katie was pleased with her new skiing goggles, but they ultimately led to disaster.

So now I am fully trained to cope with a wide range of Antarctic emergency situations, and could even light the stove to brew a cup of tea afterwards. Who said Antarctic exploration was difficult? It’s as easy as falling down a crevasse.

Team South Georgia enjoys some post-Antarctic-pre-deployment-training drinks.