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The isolated, staunchly British Falkland Islands are becoming known as the next hot spot for nature and wildlife lovers.Guy Wenborne/Falkland Islands Tourism Board

The road ended a while back – maybe an hour ago? It’s hard to get your bearings out here, rolling through ruts, grinding through gorges, blood drained from my knuckles as I hold on tight in a Land Rover adorned with antlers standing upright on the top of the tough, battered vehicle, one of hundreds on these islands.

I’ve counted just two farms over the course of 2½ hours. They are the only, lonely signs of civilization out here, bastions of green amid the vast, rough outcroppings of grey stone that make this truck feel like a lunar rover. As we lurch through one final gully, driver Keith Heathman, who runs his own one-man tour company, gestures out toward the two o’clock position. And then I see them: king penguins. A lot of them. Huddled together in a patch of brown surrounded by an almost Technicolor emerald green, the white of their tuxedo shirts flashing in the sun.

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A penguin walks along a beach in the Falkland Islands.Guy Wenborne/Falkland Islands Tourism Board

I’m headed to Volunteer Point, an isolated headland jutting east off the coast of East Falkland, a few hours but a world away from Port Stanley, the main settlement on the Falkland Islands. A British Overseas Territory with fewer than 3,000 residents (known to South Americans as Las Malvinas, derived from Îles Malouines, the name given by French explorers to these islands in 1764), this archipelago sits in some of the remotest reaches of the South Atlantic, not far off the southernmost coast of South America.

The place is famous for two things: the Patagonian toothfish, an ugly creature marketed around the world as the much more appetizing Chilean sea bass, and the 10-week war fought here between Britain and Argentina in 1982. But now, with a rising tide of tourists, brought here both by cruises and by air from Chile, this isolated, staunchly British destination is becoming known as the next hot spot for nature and wildlife lovers.

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A sign directs foot traffic to penguins at Volunteer Point.Tim Johnson

It’s a strange and wonderful place, home to the world’s largest populations of gentoo penguins and southern giant petrels, and a critical spot for the conservation of threatened birds such as ruddy-headed geese and black-throated finches. In addition to two endemic bird species, these islands host weird, wingless insects, adapted to live in these perpetually windy conditions.

But more than number and variety, it’s the sheer wildness of this place that sets it apart, remote and yet temperate, allowing access by road and sea to these untouched wonders. Here, the tussock grass grows out of control in dense, outsized, Honey-I-Shrunk-the-Kids proportions. Landscapes stretch to the horizon in all directions, interrupted only by a rocky peak, or an isolated farm, or a sudden, unexpected pocket of seabirds or mammals. Elephant seals – creatures that look like they’re from another planet – laze on the beaches. In some places, black birds fill the sky like storm clouds. On a previous trip here with an expedition cruise ship, we stopped on Sea Lion Island and walked across vast open spaces to observe alpha-male sea lions stalking a beach before we moved on to hang out with a colony of adorable rockhopper penguins.

This time, after a couple of hours with Heathman at Volunteer Point, strolling among hundreds of gentoo, Magellanic and king penguins – curious creatures that often waddle directly across my path, not a care in the world – we rumble on back to windswept Stanley. Set on an expansive harbour and centred around a whalebone archway, the town has the feel of an English Midlands village cast far into the Southern Hemisphere, albeit with a far greater love for Margaret Thatcher.

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Landscapes stretch to the horizon in all directions in the Falkland Islands.Tim Johnson

The former British prime minister famously declared, “Defeat? I do not recognize the meaning of the word,” at the advent of the Falklands War, which followed Argentina’s military invasion of the islands. Now she has a statue in Stanley, as well as a namesake local microbrew (a black IPA called Iron Lady). Every shop in town sells her biographies and posters declaring, “Keep Calm and Keep the Falklands British.” There are red telephone boxes and a receptacle for the Royal Mail. When they held a referendum in 2013, more than 99 per cent voted to remain a domain of the United Kingdom.

While Stanley fascinates, in its quirky way, the heart and soul of these islands is truly found in “camp,” the Falklands shorthand for everything outside of the capital. I set out from Stanley’s tiny domestic airport aboard a Britten-Norman Islander, the props roaring us up and over Falkland Sound to West Falkland, less than an hour later landing in a farmer’s field. Chewing their cud near the end of the long-grass “runway,” a laconic group of Hereford cattle are utterly unmoved by our arrival.

I’m met by Chris (Critter) Edwards, a ruddy sheep-shearer in a pink shirt, who piles me into another worn Land Rover. West Falkland is actually even more remote than its Eastern counterpart, and we bump down an unpaved road toward Port Howard, population 30, and the biggest place over on this side of the Sound. “We have about 40,000 sheep here,” he says with a canny smile, noting that they outnumber local residents by more than 1,000 to one. “It always sounds a little more impressive than it is.”

The husband of an acquaintance, Edwards takes me and some mutual friends for a tour of the area. We board his small dinghy and head to an inlet near his farmhouse; almost immediately we are surrounded by dozens of dolphins, spinning and swirling and soaring just off the side and bow. It gets to the point where their splashes soak us with salty water. Edwards says that he encounters these dolphins almost every day, and whales, too, the latter relatively new in these parts. “I grew up here, but I didn’t see a whale until I was in my 30s,” he says, reflectively, hand on the tiller. “It’s really a good-news story.”

I see a number of other wonders out on these islands. Back on West Falkland, I visit more penguins at Bluff Cove, relatives of those I’d seen at Volunteer Point, and also a good-news story: The growing colony began with one solitary animal waddling up the beach about 10 years ago and is now a real rookery, home to several chicks that overwintered last year.

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The growing colony of penguins at Bluff Cove is a good-news story, starting with one animal's arrival about 10 years ago.Tim Johnson

Boarding at the wharf in Stanley, I join a tour group, roaring out in a power boat from the protected waters of the harbour into the open ocean. Our destination is Kidney Island, thick with tussocks, outsized grass that sprouts as high as three metres, making it some of the tallest in the world and ideal shelter for some 30 species of birds. The island is a British national nature reserve where entrance is limited to just 12 lucky visitors a day. I spot seals and Peale’s dolphins playing in the waves near the boat soon after we arrive, and, as we drop anchor, one of the former comes close, splashing about in our wake.

Out here, however, the stars of the show aren’t in the sea. They’re in the sky.

As the day begins to wane and the light fades behind a thick layer of clouds, a number of sooty shearwaters begin a curious nightly ritual. First, I only see a couple, dipping and skipping along the surface of the water, riding the rising winds. And then more appear – and more, and more – eventually numbering in the thousands. They fill the sky – a dark, swirling kaleidoscope of avian life. Soon, we’ll be back in Stanley, where Maggie will be waiting, her face perpetually, stonily resolute atop her pedestal along the main street through town. But for now I’m content to sit back, smiling, eyes on the skies.

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The Falklands are home to the world’s largest populations of gentoo penguins.@Guy Wenborne 8456862-7

When you go

Get there: The Falkland Islands can be reached by air on LAN Airlines from Santiago, or via the South Atlantic Airbridge – the latter, officially a Royal Air Force flight, departs from Brize Norton air base in Oxfordshire, England. By sea, a number of cruise itineraries include the Falkland Islands, with a growing number of lines including Seabourn, Princess and One Ocean Expeditions including them on South American and Antarctic itineraries.

Stay: The Malvina House Hotel includes large, comfortable rooms and an excellent restaurant right in the heart of Port Stanley, within walking distance of the Falkland Islands Museum, the bust of Margaret Thatcher and most of the shops in town. Standard rooms start at £74 per person, per night, including breakfast.

Tour: A number of local operators offer excursions around these islands, including Keith Heathman, who can tailor his Land Rover tours to your interests (heathman@horizon.co.fk), and Bluff Cove Lagoon, whose tour includes penguins, a charming gift shop with handmade wool items, and home-baking and tea at the on-site Sea Cabbage Café. falklandpenguins.com.

For more information, visit falklandislands.com.

The writer was a guest of the British high commission in Ottawa and Falkland Islands Tourism, which did not review or approve this article.

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