Port Stanley, Falkland Islands

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Port Stanley, Falkland Islands

The Falklands rise from the fog and seem so inconsequential that it’s hard to believe that empires have gone to war over them, not so long ago. But there’s oil here and that’s not to be given up. There are also lots of penguins here, but you can’t run a car on penguins, so they’re now endangered. Whatever tourist comes to these islands comes to see these chubby birds and the birds look back visibly whishing there were more islands in the area to fled too. There aren’t any.

“We’re an hour’s flight off Chili,” says Linda. She’s guarding the port with nothing but her charm to entice whoever she’s guarding it from.

“Are you native to these islands?” I ask while handing over my shore leave pass. It seems kind of silly to be needing such a document in this place.

“I got no feathers,” she says (I chuckle politely), “But yeah, I was born here.”

She sounds like she was born just off Paddington Station and tells me all about her three children who went to the beach yesterday but who are now huddled by the radiator. There’s a gale tearing over the islands. Whatever trees there are were put here by immigrants and they flop like whips in this foreign soil. There’s also hardly anything colorful that can claim aboriginality here. I’m sure depression must be a public enemy on the Falklands and to combat it, houses and buildings are adorned in carefully applied but quite bright dyes. No cheerful smears or festive blots, just wide monochrome patches of bright green or red. As if someone put them there saying, “By George, now sit there and look festive!”

I only have a few minutes, so I brave wind and rain and dart down Ross Road just to be able to say that I’ve been on the Falkland Islands. There’s no time to go see the penguins or the linger long at any of the souvenir shops. But the curious blend of the homey English-style architecture and the remote, exile feeling of these islands makes me want to come back and live here for a year or so. Just to see the seasons change in their proper monthly order in stead of depending on my location. It’s February and high summer here, after all. Linda’s children were playing on the beach just yesterday.