Las Malvinas – The Falkland Islands

On our original route plan, we had included the Falkland Islands in our itinerary as it is covered in wildlife and easy-to-access penguins of all kinds! The downside to going there is that it is quite expensive to get there, and also expensive for food, accommodation, and transport.  Also there isn’t really any public transport or infrastructure – so organising a trip there requires either a pre-booked tour company, or lots and lots of individual emails to various guesthouses, transfer companies, and farmers…. In the end, we decided that due to the time and budget required to organise it – we would give it a miss. We took this decision after carefully calculating how many species of penguins we might miss out on because they are not found on the mainland…:-) (Only one species – so not too bad!)

Flights to the Falkland Islands go from Punta Arenas once a week – so it would have been our next stop, had we decided to still go…

Anyway, in the end we didn’t go – but we were constantly reminded of the islands all the way through Argentina, as due to a dispute over sovereignty between Argentina and the UK, and a 1982 war over the islands, there are memorials, murals and signs about the islands everywhere – as the Argentinian government wants to make sure that nobody forgets that they should belong to Argentina…

In Argentina, they are called Las Islas Malvinas, and when we arrived in Chile, it was strange to see them being called ‘Las Islas Falkland’ sometimes… I think only Chile ever uses this term – probably just to upset Argentinians…

So, I’ve been taking pics throughout Argentina, and here is the gallery of Las Malvinas…