In Insular Patagonia

When it’s winter in the north, the days get shorter, and the weather gets rougher, it’s common to dream of island getaways. For many Northern Hemisphere residents, that might involve a hop to the Caribbean, but I prefer the southernmost region of the Americas. Two of South America’s biggest islands – Chiloé and Tierra del Fuego (pictured above) – arouse my own enthusiasm but, after spending a couple nights in Santiago recently, I chose to bypass the rest of the continent to spend a week in the Falkland Islands (whose tiny capital of Stanley appears in the photo below).

Air travel can be tiring, and the five-hour time difference with California didn’t help, but I arrived in the Islands by mid-afternoon on a Saturday. Staying with friends – I spent a year in the Islands three decades ago – I later enjoyed dinner with them at Waterfront Kitchen Café, where Chilean chef Alex Olmedo oversees a notably sophisticated menu. As an appetizer, the South Georgia reindeer paté deserves a story in itself, but I also chose the chimichurri-marinated local lamb rack for my main dish.

Over the next two days, I did a variety of town activities, including a visit to the professionally transformed Historic Dockyard Museum complex (pictured above), but Tuesday and Wednesday were special – I got to fly my favorite airline, the Falkland Islands Government Air Service (FIGAS), to the offshore wildlife paradises of Sea Lion Island and Bleaker Island. I always enjoy the aerial views from their ten-seater Britten-Norman Islander aircraft, and I also enjoy the fact that there’s no oppressive airport security – no full body scans and feel free to take water on on-board - unless you count the fact that FIGAS weighs its passengers to be able to balance the load.

I made only a brief day visit to Sea Lion, a compact island with a modern lodge and easy access to wildlife sites that include three species of penguins and my personal favorite elephant seals. There are also orcas offshore, but none were around on this day. In the afternoon, I flew to nearby Bleaker, where wool ranchers Mike and Phyllis Rendell also encourage wildlife-oriented visitors to stay at their renovated Cobb’s Cottage and the newer Cassard House, which has four spacious bedrooms and full-board service. On a quick Land Rover tour around the island’s north end, we saw hundreds of Gentoo penguins and king cormorants, but also a solitary fur seal who had hauled himself ashore at a site where such sightings are infrequent (wool and wildlife appear to be compatible!).

At present, there’s only one flight weekly between Punta Arenas and the Islands – I’d have like to stay at least another few days - but, once you get back to the continent, you can tour Tierra del Fuego, Torres del Paine, and other thrillingly remote destinations. I’ve done that many times myself, but to me it’s also special to lodge on small offshore islands like Sea Lion and Bleaker, where you can explore the penguin-rich seashore and marine mammal colonies with just a handful of other guests around – and often you’re the only one of your kind.

The Whales of the Strait

One major highlight of any Patagonian cruise is the wildlife. From the decks of any vessel, and on land excursions, passengers can enjoy the sight of countless birds – many of them unique to the Southern Hemisphere – and marine mammals such as elephant seals and sea lions. Literally and metaphotically, though, the biggest attraction is the whales.

On Argentina’s Península Valdés, Puerto Pirámides (pictured above) is the continent’s main whale-watching site; from July (mid-winter) to November (late spring), pods of southern right whales arrive to mate and give birth. Most visitors arrive from the town of Puerto Madryn, which has cruise-ship facilities, though Madryn gets many more overland travelers. Most Pirámides vessels are larger catamarans that can seem crowded, though it’s not quite mass tourism – some smaller rigid inflatables get closer to the animals.

For visitors to southern Patagonia, though, there are more intimate options, viewing southern humpbacks (pictured above) in the western Strait of Magellan. In January and February, operating out of Punta Arenas, Cruceros Australis does special whale-watching itineraries that make a detour to Isla Carlos III before returning to their usual Beagle Channel route to Cape Horn and Ushuaia. In rigid inflatables, passengers can get even closer to these gregarious (and enormous) animals.

I’ve never taken that specific itinerary, but I have visited the western Strait on two other occasions. A decade ago, I took one of the earliest trips with Whalesound, which converted a small river vessel from Argentina in a comfortable shuttle for a dozen or so travelers to Isla Carlos III, where it had set up a dome-tent camp (pictured above) connected by boardwalks to its dining room/clubhouse (pictured below). During the day, the ship took us to see the whales, but it was also possible to hike to sea lion and penguin colonies.

More recently, in January, I took a two-night one-day excursion on board the M/V Forrest (pictured above) with Punta Arenas’s Expedición Fitz Roy, which has rehabbed a vessel that formerly hauled wool around the Falkland Islands, where I first saw it in 1982. The accommodations are cozy – cabins with two or four bunks each – but the dining lounge is comfortable and the exterior decks provide plenty of opportunity for cetacean close-ups. The Forrest also makes a side trip to Isla Santa Inés (pictured below), shuttling passengers ashore for close-ups of the glacier there.

Tiptoe Through the Tussac? Sidestepping Sea Lions at Cape Dolphin

Saturday afternoon, after a delayed arrival at the Falklands, I enjoyed a home-cooked dinner of Patagonian toothfish (“Chilean sea bass”) before a relatively early to bed – in a single night, I managed to pay the enormous sleep debt that had accumulated due to five hours of jet lag (from California) and three days of appointments (in Santiago). Sunday morning I felt refreshed and, when my host Ray Poole asked if I might be up for an excursion, I impulsively suggested Cape Dolphin, East Falkland’s northwestern peninsula that I never seen in my previous stays (see map above).

Ray and his wife Nancy accepted my suggestion enthusiastically, and packed a picnic lunch on a sunny morning that – unusually for the Falklands – was utterly windless. We drove their Land Rover out the Mount Pleasant Airport road for a few miles before turning onto the San Carlos Road. It took two hours to cover the 60 miles to Cape Dolphin Farm, but another hour to manage the ten miles to the tip of the peninsula, covered by dense tussac grass (Paridiochloa flabellata). En route, we stopped to observe a colony of perhaps 400 Gentoo penguins, in the early stages of their nesting season.

At one point, though, the tussac grew too dense for the Rover to advance any farther, and we parked to enjoy sandwiches before Ray and I continued toward the tip of the peninsula. Nancy chose to stay back for concern about the southern sea lions (Otaria flavescens) that inhabit the tussac. As the photograph below shows, the males are imposing beasts, weighing up 750 pounds (350 kg), and can be aggressive. Fortunately, they’re not quite so quick on the ground as their African namesakes, even though their manes evoke some resemblance.

Ray scouted the route ahead, occasionally climbing atop a dead tussac mound, but on one occasion he inadvertently startled a large male and briefly lost his shoes before the beast retreated. I followed and, for my part, I’m cautious walking through tussac bogs; in the end, we saw dozens of lions before returning safely to the vehicle. Most of the sleeping lions didn’t even see us but, when they did, they scampered away toward towards the beach below.

I don’t know of any actual attacks on hikers here, but it’s an exhilarating experience to walk among them. It made for an auspicious start to what will be an unfortunately short week in the Islands, before I return to Chile on Saturday.