The Falklands Islands are a small group of islands about 500 or 600 miles of the southern Atlantic coast of Argentina. In addition to being a safe haven for Britishites around the world, they are really a beautiful collection of islands, with some amazing views and a really impressive set of supported wildlife.
They’re an independent British territory, and have been controversial territory for the two countries for about 400 years. Getting there is tricky, because you can’t fly there directly from Argentina. To get there, you basically have 3 options:
- Fly from Punta Arenas, Chile. LAN flies to Stanley from Punta Arenas, and you can get to Punta Arenas from either Santiago (international airport) or Ushuaia (international airport, but if you’re coming from another country, you’ll probably land in Buenos Aires and them fly to Ushuaia).
- Benefits: Easy flight to the Falklands. If you’re already in South America, this is the simplest way to get to the Falklands (and probably the cheapest, as well).
- Drawbacks: this flight only happens once per week, on Saturdays. So not only would you arrive on a Saturday, you would have to leave on a Saturday as well. So you’d need to spend exactly a week there (or two, or three, and so on).
- Fly from an RAF base in England. The RAF offers semi-chartered flights (with some tourist seats) to the Falklands from the UK on an irregular schedule.
- Benefits: you can get there direct from above the equator (pretty far north in the northern hemisphere, actually).
- Drawbacks: just about everything else about this flight is a drawback- there’s no published schedule, costs are pretty extreme, and it’s really really long.
- Visit in a cruise ship from Ushuaia. This is probably the best option, and is included in certain Antarctic cruise routes (which is how we went).
- Benefits: scheduled visit, at a reasonable cost, guided tours of the sites on your itinerary.
- Drawbacks: may not be flexible enough to allow for independent exploration.
What to do there:
- Visit Stanley, the main town (of 3000 people), and check out the museums, some of the memorials (including an Argentine one, which is a recent addition), and some of the wrecks in te harbor.
- Visit some of Camp (the outlying islands and residences). The thing about camp is, most of it is on other islands. You can try to travel by boat, but the distances are often long enough to eat up a day of travel. There are a few private planes that you can fly to different locations from, and I assume flight costs are reasonable – although I know nothing about them. Be aware that travel around the islands is unpredictable an often weather-dependent, so you may want to have a few days of flex time if you are making the travel arrangements.
As I mentioned, the islands are really beautiful – check out some photos if you don’t believe me…
