16 | THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
travel
For an archipelago just 350 miles off the
southeastern coast of Argentina, the
Falkland Islands, also known as las Islas
Malvinas, are maddeningly difficult to
get to. There’s just one commercial
flight a week, from Santiago, via Punta
Arenas, Chile, along with a twice-weekly
18-hour trip on a British Royal Air Force
plane from an air base outside Oxford,
England. In the winter months, when I
visited, the islands’ position on the
southern edge of the Atlantic Ocean,
only 850 miles from the Antarctic Circle,
adds more problems: dense fog, low
clouds and turbulence-inducing rotor
winds that shut down the airport at
Mount Pleasant, a British military base,
for days at a time.
Because of one missed flight connec-
tion in Brazil, it took me two weeks to get
to the Falklands — and two extra days of
successive cancellations to get out.
The relatively few visitors to the Falk-
lands tend to arrive in the Southern
Hemisphere’s summer, when the is-
lands are teeming with wildlife — five
species of penguins, elephant seals and
dense colonies of albatrosses. On some
cruise days, when ships stop by the
most developed island, East Falkland,
on their way to Antarctica, the popula-
tion of the island’s capital, Stanley, about
2,500, more than doubles.
The appeal then of visiting just a cou-
ple of weeks after the winter solstice is
the feeling of profound remoteness,
magnified by the absence of cruise ship
day-trippers. Over the course of ninedays, I encountered only three other
people who were on the islands as tour-
ists. And as I wandered the streets of
Stanley, many Falklanders’ first ques-
tion was, “What are you doing here
now?”VERY FLUFFY PENGUINS
It’s not just that the Falklands are espe-
cially inaccessible in the winter; travel
in the islands is also extra difficult.
Paved roads are few and far between,
and the four-wheel-drive tracks that
crisscross the islands are sometimes
rendered impassable by mud and ice.
Winters get so rough that even three of
the islands’ five penguin species ditch
town for warmer climes. In fact, in the
winter, the only way to see the animals
in large numbers involves a helicopter.
So on one clear afternoon, I buckled
myself into the shotgun seat of a single-
engine Robinson R44 helicopter at Stan-
ley Airport and set off for Volunteer
Point, on East Falkland’s eastern coast.
Just a few months ago, this would have
been impossible: Falklands Helicopter
Services, a family-run business, started
up in March, offering an easier way to
get out to one of the islands’ most awe-
inspiring stops.A short walk from where the helicop-
ter landed, I came face to face with the
largest king penguin colony on the is-
lands. More than a thousand breeding
pairs huddled together near a white-
sand beach, occasionally lifting their
beaks in the air to let off rapid-fire calls.
With jet black heads decorated with
apostrophe-shaped shocks of orange,
the three-foot-tall birds give off an air of
majesty that kicked the air out of my
lungs. But if the parents are all regal dig-
nity, the offspring are the embodiment
of awkward.
The fluffy brown balls, two feet high,
alternated between cuddling up to their
parents and running in circles with the
energy of 4-year-olds right after a bowl
of sugar-bombed breakfast cereal. They
sang while flapping their wings, as if still
unconvinced that they can’t fly.
All rules of engagement with wildlife
— keep your distance, don’t interact —
went out the window as the 7-month-old
chicks cautiously approached me and
the three other human visitors. One
pecked at a glove our pilot had momen-
tarily put on the cold ground. Another
made eye contact with me, waddling up
until it was a foot away. Then it abruptly
turned around, cried out and barreled
into a friend before steadying itself and
running back to its parents.THE SCOPE OF SOLITUDE
To fully grasp the remoteness of the
Falklands, it’s best to see them from a
few hundred feet up.
That’s why I also spent a morning in
the co-pilot seat of a Britten-Norman Is-
lander plane, one among the handful of
light aircraft that make up the fleet of
the Falkland Islands Government AirService. F.I.G.A.S. offers an indispens-
able service to Falklanders, connecting
Stanley, where a vast majority of people
live, with “camp,” what locals call the
rest of the mostly undeveloped land.
Visitors can book a “Round Robin” flight
with F.I.G.A.S., accompanying the pilot
on an island-hopping trip to deliver peo-
ple, mail and supplies to remote settle-
ments.
“All you really need for an airfield is a
windsock and a shack,” explained my pi-
lot, Tom Chater, who also flew the heli-
copter out to Volunteer Point.
Between each landing were huge
swaths of treeless wilderness. Empty
plains abutted rocky mountains that
seemed to be dragging thick clouds to-
ward them. We flew over white sand
beaches and turquoise water that would
not be out of place in the Caribbean, the
kelp forests offshore looking, from
above, like coral reefs. Flying low over
narrow straits, we saw both sei and
southern right whales.
Only occasionally did we fly over any
sign of human life: farms, surrounded
by miles and miles of open plains; nar-
row mud tracks made over the course of
decades by the passage of Land Rovers;
and sheep shearing sheds near the wa-ter, dating from a time when the ocean
was the only way to transport wool be-
tween islands.
When I explored East Falkland over-
land, the impression was similar. I trav-
eled out to settlements like Darwin, 60
miles from Stanley, where the official
population is seven, although one of the
residents told me it’s actually more like
five. I walked across the Bodie Bridge,
the southernmost suspension bridge in
the world, a title that isn’t going to last.
Connecting nothing with nothing, it’s
been long abandoned, and wind and salt
have taken their toll. Rust covered bro-
ken segments of metal, and the bridge
creaked ominously with each step.
For big-city people like me, there’s a
fascination that comes with places like
the Falklands. It’s not just the sense of
space — there’s so much of it — but the
way of life that feels so foreign. Being
there in winter allowed me to pretend I
was living the same, slow day-to-day as
the islands’ residents. When sideways
rain and biting wind made long walks
impossible, I spent hours in the cozy
pubs of Stanley, where music from the
1980s blared over the speakers. I eaves-
dropped on conversations about how
the Falklands were faring in the global
sheepshearing competition that was
taking place in France, town gossip
about who had left for the winter and
who had come into town, predictions
about the weather. No one looked at
their phones.FRESH SCARS
As an outsider experiencing the Falk-
lands’ emptiness, it was hard to fathom
that almost 1,000 people lost their lives
in a war over the islands’ ownership. In
1982, acting on a long-held territorial
claim, the Argentine government —
ruled by a military junta at the time —
sent troops to the islands. The British re-
sponded by calling in a task force, and
over the course of 74 days, the islands
erupted in violence.
The war ended with Argentina’s sur-
render, but the South American country
still claims sovereignty over the islands,
which it calls las Islas Malvinas. The
British government and, according to a
2013 referendum, 99.7 percent of Falk-
landers consider the islands an over-
seas territory of Britain.
Almost every conversation I had with
a local came back to the war at some
point. Those who lived through it book-
mark events with “before,” “during” and
“after” the war. Those who didn’t still
talk about it with nationalistic passion.
Some of the people I spoke to felt
strongly about their relationship with
Britain, while others were cautiously op-
timistic about a future where the dispute
could be laid to rest, but what I didn’t
find was indifference.
Leona Roberts, 47, a member of the
Falklands’ Legislative Assembly, said,
“Argentina looks at the Falklands as a
piece of their soul that’s been ripped out
— so it’s very emotive and very difficult
to reconcile that with what we see as the
reality: that we’ve always been the resi-
dent population and have built this place
from scratch.”
Reminders of the war are every-
where. A memorial to the British sol-
diers who lost their lives stands in Stan-
ley, in front of a bust of Margaret
Thatcher, the prime minister at the time.
Far away from the capital, in the middle
of an empty field, is a cemetery for Ar-
gentine soldiers, white crosses deco-
rated with flowers and wreaths. Many of
those soldiers still haven’t been identi-
fied; their graves are inscribed with the
words, “Soldado Argentino sólo cono-
cido por Dios” (“Argentine soldier only
known by God”). At least one wreck of
an Argentine helicopter lies by the side
of the road, untouched; craters from
mortar shells pock the otherwise un-
touched landscape; and minefields are
cordoned off by barbed wire.For Falklanders, it would be impossi-
ble to forget even if they wanted to.STRANDED IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC
There’s no doubt that tourism is on the
rise in the Falkland Islands. Another
weekly flight, this one from São Paulo,
Brazil, is set to begin in November, mak-
ing trips for those not on cruises more
feasible.
There’s no chance of it ever being a
major destination though — it’s far too
out of the way. You feel it on the journey
over but also once you’re on the ground.
The internet is terrible, and bandwidth
is as valuable as gold; bananas in the su-
permarket go for a dollar apiece.The day I was supposed to leave, the
weather took a nasty turn and my flight
was canceled — and then canceled again
the next day. A tribe of stranded trav-
elers began to form as we awaited news
about the flight. Among them were a
group of Uruguayans in town for ship-
ping-related business; a British aviation
physician; and David Greene, co-host of
NPR’s “Morning Edition” and one of the
three other tourists on the islands.
We waited for the weather to clear.
David and I went on a Stanley pub crawl
— as in we visited all four of them — on a
Saturday, when the bars become packed
and after-parties continue until the
early morning. Some of us resorted togoing to daily screenings at the new —
and only — movie theater in town. I
planned my days slowly; errands like
buying a T-shirt or mailing postcards
became landmark events. I made new
friends.
Consumed by a sense of total isola-
tion, I leaned into the rare feeling of be-
ing off the map, stuck somewhere and
part of a small community of travelers.
Despite the frustrations of all the can-
cellations and delays that surrounded
my trip to the Falklands, I don’t think I’d
have it any other way.
It’s comforting to know that there are
still places that take a serious effort to
get to — and to leave.Clockwise from above: King penguins on East Falkland Island; the Bodie Bridge, the southernmost suspension bridge in the world; and graves of Argentine soldiers, many unknown, in the East Falkland cemetery.PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEBASTIAN MODAK/THE NEW YORK TIMESIn the Falklands, remote gets a new meaning
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