 Penguins of the Falkland Islands |
It's a long umbilical - 8,000 miles from Britain, 'the motherland', to the 200 islands which comprise the Falklands, deep in the South Atlantic Ocean, 400 miles east of the South American coastline, a thousand miles north of the Antarctic Peninsula. From the moment of first sight of the seemingly featureless panorama from an aircraft window it is hard to imagine two of the world's mighty nations going to war over what one claims under the name of the Falklands and the other Los Malvinas.
Over 25 years on from the war over sovereignty that claimed nearly a thousand lives, it is again an important port. Not just for its distinction as having the smallest and most remote capital city in the world but as a centre of the booming fishing license and burgeoning oil exploration industries, and as a gateway to the Antarctic Peninsula. There are no five star hotels on the Falklands but there are comfortable guest houses, decent meals at the Upland Goose Hotel and Malvina House Hotel and sufficient watering holes for an actual pub crawl to be possible.
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