Falklands blog for Wednesday May 8 2013
Off to Goose Green via MPA. The road signs only seem to indicate directions from one side only, so off we toddled down to Mare Harbour – wrong way.
Goose Green, a photographers dream as always. Before we popped in, we stopped off at the Argentine Cemetery. Very peaceful – little wind on the hillside. What a waste of young men’s lives – the fallout from the “Conflict”
We visited the school – combined nursery, infant and junior school. A warm and sunny building, jam-packed with pictures, paintings and low slung fractions – a hazard to people of my height as cards bearing fractions and percentages were pegged to clothes lines across the room.
The jetty with resident night herons was visited as we searched for the settlement nanny goat – boy was she Not only strong but also had an unfortunate predilection for head butting.
Back up the road to San Carlos and Blue Beach Cemetery. Then back to Stanley – the lorry driver called it doing the Round Robin – travelling back along the unpaved road on the other side of the mountains – “No Man’s Land”
At last to Estancia farm (literally farm, farm – look up the meaning of Estancia in Spanish) and to the fabulous stone runs. Lumps of quartz (actually enormous boulders) deposited by ice sheets after the tops of the mountains had been scoured by the last ice age. The stone runs off the mountains and is almost impossible to traverse without serious orthopaedic trauma to your ankles. It is beautiful though and is commented on by Darwin after his visit to the Islands.
Over the range and we joined the MPA road, a quick left turn and off homeward.
A sense of achievement and a realisation that to understand these islands you need to know their geology.
