Stanley (Puerto Argentina), Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Great Britain

 So if you think the Middle East has a complicated and contentious history over a property, so do the Falkland Islands, or the Islas Malvinas as the Argentines know these islands.  We learned this from many lectures and tour guides.  Much was discussed about the war in 1982.  It has changed hands and been fought over for several centuries.  Right now it is under British rule which the islanders want since they are all British at this time.  We did visit the the town but the main attraction was the geology and the penguins.

Christ Church Cathedral, is the southernmost Anglican cathedral in the world.  The whale bone arch was a commemoration of 100 years of Port Stanley

Whale Bone Arch - erected in 1933 to mark 100 years of continuous British administration in the Falklands was constructed from the jawbones of two blue whales.  An impressive visualization of the size of these creatures.

The town is very British in appearance

Funny message on a chair in their local museum

Police Station....originally fishermen lodgings

Stone Run - love this quote by Darwin...In many parts of the island the bottoms of the valleys are covered in an extraordinary manner by myriad great loose angular fragments of the quartz rock, forming "streams of stones." These have been mentioned with surprise by every voyager since the time of Pernety (French Explorer in 1763). The blocks are not waterworn, their angles being only a little blunted; they vary in size from one or two feet in diameter to ten, or even more than twenty times as much.  Check out these pictures:

You can see this stream of rocks coming down the mountain.  The guide says there is water flowing beneath these rocks.

Onto the penguin colonies.  These two colonies are different types of penguins from the earlier Magellanic penguins that we saw in Puerto Madryn.  We will see the colorful King Penguins and the smaller Gentoo.  The kings are just hatching their young which are 1 - 2 weeks old.  The gentoo youngster are about 4 months old and are only distinguishable from the parents by the juvenile type movements.  We will see the more mature Gentoo juveniles at the beach learning to swim in the waves and beach waters.  We had a lot of laughs watching the younger Gentoo hatchlings tottering along looking for a parent to feed them.  The adults are very selective to whom they will feed.  We wished we had gotten more footage of their adorable hurried scamper from one spot to another.  But before we entered the rookeries we had to disinfect our feet to prevent the avian flu from entering this colony.

King colonie is in front of the Gentoo colonie.  They seem fine sharing the same breeding grounds but do stick together.

Chick still small enough to hide under parent

Gentoo Penguins

This apparently is a comfy pose

After the chicks are old enough (4 moths or so) to take care of themselves the adults move off to a molting area and shed their old feathers for new waterproof feathers.

Watching these young penguins so reminded me of my youth playing in the ocean waves of Hope Ranch Beach: Click on this link:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BHr8_mC_hee6PQYfrEdKpYcFYGTG9D69/view?usp=drive_link