Day 66: Carcass Island

Wednesday 16th January

Today was the 3rd out of 5 days off that James and I have off together. I had been quite proactive in booking exciting things for us to do. One of the things you can do is book helitrips, like the one to SeaLion Island that both of us have done before. As my tour is four months, I am entilted to book higher priority trips as part of the welfare package, to further away places. When I came to MPA I was sat next to a lday called Jane who is one of the heli-trip pilots, and she is a Falkland Islander. Her parents own one of the islands on West Falkland called Carcass Island. She had told me how beautiful it was. I had heard that West Falkland was quite different to the East Island and that I should go if I get the chance. Apparently it was a lot greener, and mountainous and that there are actually trees there. It's normally quite difficult to get to - as it's so far they don't normally do free helitrips as they get bumped as it's too far and requires refuelling.

When I went to enquire however, it turns out that today a lot of the military people were flying out to do a check up on some of the sites they have people stationed at across the island. And Carcass island is only a 5 minute detour from Mount Byron, so it wasn't a problem, we were able to take up two free seats at the back on the helicopter and get dropped off then collected later on.

The trip was about an hour an a half, as we had to refuel at Fox Bay, and then drop people at various sites across the islands. I have included a map so you can see what is where:

A map I found from google, with the places we have been in red added on by me :)

We arrived on Carcass Island at around 11am, and were met by Jane and her husband and two children. We were asked what we would like to see and do, and would we like a cup of tea first or after we had walked around to see the penguins etc. We had about 4 hours before we would be picked up again, and with the wind forecast to increase we decided to do the sight seeing first. Carcass is about 6 miles long, and is quite hilly. The visibility was a little pour but you could still see great views of the neighbouring islands.

 

It was very pretty, but I don't think it was all that different from East Island. It was a little bit greener, but I doubt I would have made that observation if no one had told me. There were a few trees near the settlement where Jane and her family live, but again, I don't think I would have noticed... Anyway, the beach was about a 40 minute walk, and was very pretty with lots of penguins on it. Yay. Still in love with the penguins. The sun came out for a while too which was great, and of course we both look sun burnt again. Doesn't take much at all down here to get burnt.

 

After the beach we walked up one of the big hills to take photos of the view and I was pathetic and didn't think I would make it up, but I did! After we had finished looking around we walked back towards Jane's house. It was pretty cool to be able to have the entire island to our selves without any one else there, and I couldn't help but think how lucky Jane's two children are to have their own island, with penguins on it, to grow up on. Amazing.

 

The helicopter landed just as we were getting to the house, and about 10 army guys got off. They had finished work early and thought they would come to Jane's for tea and cakes. She is the boss of the helicopter place at MPA, so everyone knows her. We went into her (very large!) house, and she has put on loads of tea and cakes for everyone, and refused to take any payment. AND - they have a couple of cows there too, I'd not seen any cows on the Falklands. And we even had real milk!! It's all UHT brought down on the airbridge, so that was nice. My tea did taste a little like the farm though, and although I know all milk comes from cows, it was a little off putting knowing that it was litterally out of an animal and hadn't been "edited" in anyway...

 

We left at around 4pm, and made it back to MPA at around quarter past five... Just in time for the sailing regatta... but you'll have to wait for the next penguin diaries for that...!

 

 

A baby Caracara bird

 

You can see the settlement in the distance, the little houses and the "woods"

The farm at the settlement