Position  51:41.52 S  057:49.19 W

Eventually I have seen a penguin, hooray!  We went on a tour of part of the island today, which started off with us visiting Darwin and Goose Green, which were scenes of fierce fighting during the Falklands War.  We got to see the terrain that the Soldiers from the Parachute Regiment had to overcome to liberate the small farm, and its residents.  It was a battalion sized battle, with over 1400 Argentine soldiers dug into defensive positions.  We visited the spot where H Jones fell, after storming and securing an Argentine trench.  Overlooking Goose Green from just above where H Jones fell, is a memorial to the second Parachute regiment, who lost a lot of men on that ground 25 years ago.

From Goose Green we went to New Haven in search of a penguin colony.  After about a 40 minute drive, we went off road, with Russell our driver taking us down the side of an inlet, but unfortunately we couldn’t see any penguins as the colony had moved.  Typical I thought, but when we drove around the other side, you could see a large dark patch on the ground, which looked a little like where a large bonfire had been.  This was where all the penguins had been recently, and so within a minute we stopped, and we all peered hard at the shoreline.  At first I thought that they were geese but Russell said that he could see Penguins so off we walked.  After about 10 minutes Emrah and I spotted the penguins on the beach.  They were Gentoo Penguins and there were at least 60 of them, maybe more, dotted around the bay and in the water.  We walked around them trying carefully not to come between them and the water, as they like to feel that they can escape to sea if in danger.  I got some great photos of them, as they waddled in and out of the sea, and up the hill.  It was 40 minutes of penguin magic.

The final excursion of the day took us to the British Cemetery which overlooks San Carlos Water, and is located just above “Blue Beach” as code named by the British Task Force.  There weren’t too many head stones, with many of the servicemen lost in the ships that sunk, which are now war graves.  Others were repatriated back to the UK on the request of their families.  All of the graves, although officially decorated in the insignia of their regiments, had personal inscriptions from their loved ones.  I was very moved.

Ian Jinks on Pelagic signing out