Santa Ynez Valley

Santa Ynez Valley
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Saturday, December 14, 2013

Antarctic Adventure - Day 6

In the morning of day 6 (Nov. 12), the ship docked in the town of Stanley, which is the capital of the Falkland Islands.  Most of the population of the Falkland Islands live in Stanley, with the rest scattered thinly across the remainder of the islands.



For the morning, we opted to take a tour out into the countryside to visit a typical Falkland Islands sheep farm.

Along the way we saw many of these "stone rivers".  These are an interesting geological weathering feature that is very common on the Falkland Islands.


Since the Falkland Islands have no native trees, the farmers have taken to burning peat for fuel.  This is a picture of a peat bed on the farm where the peat is dug out in blocks of roughly a one foot cube and allowed to dry before being burned.


Being a sheep farm, we were given a demonstration of shearing a sheep to harvest its wool.



During the afternoon we took a tour of Stanley.

A private open-air whaling museum was one of the things we saw.


We also toured a small historical museum.



That evening the ship left Stanley to begin the voyage from the South Atlantic Ocean into the Scotia Sea and our next stop, South Georgia Island.

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