Penguin Diaries: Day 53: ***UPDATED!!!*** Surfing with dolphins in Stanley

Thursday 3rd Jan, Friday 4th Jan

***PHOTOS NOW UPDATED TO FULL SIZE!!***

Best day ever!

James and I had our second day off together scheduled for Friday, so we decided to hire a landrover for Thursday and Friday, book a night in a hotel in Stanley, and get away from MPA for a night.

Jo (my new favourite person) offered to cover the last couple of hours of my shift on Thursday, so we were on our way by 6pm. It's about an hours drive to Stanley, even though it is only 34 miles away the roads are rough and the cars are limited to 40mph. It's going to feel very weird driving on a motorway when I get back!!

We arrived just in time to put our bags away and have a mooch around the bar (drinking actual Plymouth Gin!!) before going into the restaurant. The meal was absolutely delicious, I had calamari and venison. Yum!!!!!!! The staff were all really great too.

After dinner we decided to go on a bit of a pub crawl. I was surprised at how many pubs there were actually!! We headed first to Deano's bar. If ever there was any doubt about the Falklands being British, this evening proved otherwise. I had kinda thought before I came here that the locals would be very different to British people. But we could have been in a working men's club in deepest darkest yorkshire. Cristina Kirchner should come on a bar crawl in Stanley and see for herself that The Falklands are 100% British.

The next morning we got up early for breakfast then for a morning on bimbling around Stanley, getting out souvenirs and gifts. The weather was really nice, we were really lucky. The end of year stats showered that it rained every day in December at MPA except one. So we were very lucky indeed!

We then headed off to check out Surf Bay... reports from other met people said that it should have been named No Surf Bay, but there were some good clean waves a foot or two high. The beach was again, another beautiful white sandy beach. It was the busiest I have ever seen a beach here - between 5 and 10 people there at any one time!! We popped back into town for some lunch, then headed back to the beach.

We parked up, and James went on a head and then shouted back to me that there were dolphins in the water! I had never seen a dolphin before, so I was very excited!!!!!! From what I could see there was about 5 of them, and when James got in the water I expected them to all swim away. But according to James there was about 10 of them, and they were just as interested in him as he was with them. He was so close he could have touched them, and they were swimming along and following him in the water for about 30 minutes. It was amazing, and is the only one time I wished I wasn't scared of the sea, as I could have gone swimming with them too. People pay a fortun to swim with dolphins, and they were right there. The sea was far too cold to have gone in without a wetsuit though anyway. Apparently they are called "Peale's Dolphins". (More photos on request - I have loads!!!)

Once the dolphins got bored they swam off, and James came back to the beach to put his penguin onsie on, and went back out into the water one last time.

Amazing :)