Jun 09 2011
SCURVY DOGS OF HIT AND RUN HISTORY
Stranded in the Falklands, Part 2
Six thousand five hundred miles from home, 400 miles east of South America, and only 800 miles north of Antarctica, I came to realize a few key truths.
The first was that peoples living in similar geographies can relate to them very differently. Having spent a week in the Falkland Islands, following the story of John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition, with our crew from Hit and Run History, some things felt fairly familiar. Talking about their tourist season (here in the Southern Hemisphere being November to March), we heard stories of how it was common for locals to work two or three jobs. Farmer/tour guide, for example. Or police officer/bar tender/taxi driver. Come to think of it now, that last combination makes a lot of sense.
That’s the sort of jack-of- all-trades adaptation to a seasonal economy that Cape Codders are known for. Nimble like a catboat, we can turn on a dime…typically to save one, if not make one.
On the other hand, here we were amongst these islands – their treelessness compounding their vast open spaces – and only took a boat ride once.
Yes, certainly, the weather in May was akin to late November on Cape Cod.
But we weren’t there for anything other than tracking the movements of the first American voyage ‘round the world. This wasn’t a golf vacation or a series of board meetings. We tried every chance we could to get outside into the wild. With 3,000 people scattered across a collection of islands totaling about the size of Connecticut, you would be forgiven to think you’d find a seafaring people. Instead, the place has grown up connected more to sheep herding. That and taking advantage of its location at the approach between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The Falklands are pretty much the equivalent of that “Last Gas for 200 miles” sign on a lonely stretch of highway in the desert Southwest. You stop here for your provisions, coming or going, or you take your chances. That’s a very different kind of economy from ours. It also means that there’s a lot of mutton available from sheep that have outlived the usefulness of their wool. For a land whose high sustained winds and otherwise tundra-ish climate discourage a lot of vegetable farming (and ongoing tensions with Argentina complicate produce shipments), the high protein, low greens diet made us yearn for even a decent glass of orange juice. And there’s where I came to a second truth.
Having lived in Europe years back, and then recently traveled to China this April, and through Chile on our way down to the Falklands, I can say with a clear conscious: America may be falling behind in educational, economic and technological advancement, but at least we know how to make OJ.
I can’t say what it is about European orange juice except it always seems rather thin. Not watered-down maybe. Just like it had been really strained and perhaps not made with the sweetest oranges. Like something you felt you had to drink, but did not want to.As forAsia and Chile, what can I say except “Tang.” Or some drink with an orange color and a sweet flavor. Not quite flat Fanta, but closer to that than anything that actually came from a tree. As I have said about the complete inability to find decent, cheap bread in the United States versus in Europe, “How hard can it be?” In the case of OJ, the recipe is even simpler than bread (which has only been around a few thousand years).
Take an orange. Drain it. Put in glass. Serve. Let me tell you, I don’t understand it, but America needs to hold onto that knowledge. We got that down. The third truth was that, no matter that only 50 miles separated us in Port Howard from the airport in Mount Pleasant, there was just no way we were going to get to the once-a-week LAN Airlines flight. We were stuck.
No matter that the LAN flight back to Chile was delayed by weather coming in, and was then sitting on the tarmac, as a helicopter pilot in Mount Pleasant was telling me over the phone. All inter-island flights with the Falkland Islands Government Air Service (FIGAS) were grounded by historic fogs, and had been so for the previous two days. Up until a few hours prior, we had patiently waited to be taken from Saunders Island, in the remote west.
The planes remained grounded, however, by fog at the main airport in Stanley, the capital. Then a helicopter was to have headed out – only to hit a wall of fog 10 minutes into the flight. At last we prevailed upon our hosts to take us by Zodiac to West Falkland Island. From there, we picked up a ride in a Land Rover Defender across this open space the size of Rhode Island with only 90 inhabitants.
All we would need is to catch the ferry across Falkland Sound, or to see if the fog had lifted enough to get a plane into Port Howard, on the west side of the sound. Only 50 miles from our LAN flight, and our one chance to get off the Falklands for another seven days. Neither was happening. No ferry until the next afternoon. No pilots willing to fly. They’re used to wind – and lots of it – in the Falklands. But not fog. And here we were, a crew from an island of sand and fog, trapped on another.
So to cap it off, a fourth and final truth was to come to light —it was going to be a long seven days without any orange juice.
(to be continued…)
