Thursday 23 March 2006
Rehabilitation
After a winter at Halley, the Falkland Islands acts as a gentle reintroduction back into civilization. Since we arrived my list of "firsts for two years" has continued to grow - I've seen all manner of strange objects such as cars, trees and children, eaten in a restaurant, brought stuff in shops (with real money!) and even had a bath. We are all staying in Stanley, the Falklands capital, which is a small enough town that you regularly bump into people who work for BAS. We tend to fill up all the hotels when we are in town so initially I was put in a nice house on the outskirts of the town that is owned by one of the hotels.
Stanley Church and Whalebone arch. The arch is made from the jawbones of two blue whales.
On Monday we took advantage of the excellent sporting facilities in Stanley and played a couple of hours of squash followed by a game of indoor 4-a-side football. All was going well until right near the end when I fell awkwardly and managed to sprain my ankle quite badly (not used to solid ground, I guess). It swelled up like an egg so a visit to the hospital was in order for a quick checkup and some tablets. I took Tuesday pretty easy to give it a chance to heal and arranged to move into a room in a more central hotel to save me from having to walk 2 miles into town every day for meals.
Is it supposed to be that colour? My ankle, yesterday.
By Wednesday my ankle had come up in a lovely purple bruise but it was feeling much better. I still couldn't walk long distances but at least I could put some weight on it. A few of us decided to rent a Land Rover to explorer some more of the East Island outside Stanley. We spent the best part of the day driving, with stops at Darwin, Goose Green, an Argentine cemetery, San Carlos, Mount Pleasant, and Port Louis.
Graves at the Argentine Cemetery near Goose Green.
View from the top of one of the hills during our drive.
Near Mount Pleasant we saw the RAF Tornadoes doing circuits and on the way back from Port Louis we stopped at the wreck of a crashed helicopter left over from the Falklands Conflict in 1984. The scenery was not spectacular like South Georgia but still beautiful in a rugged, barren way.
An RAF Tornado passing overhead during routine exercises.
Wreckage of a helicopter shot down during the Falklands War.
Posted by simon at 10:16 AM | Feedback (3)