The Falkland Islands: Six Attractions and Natural Wonders

Wind, wildlife, and a contested flag

The Falkland Islands are a British Overseas Territory of about 3,600 people in the South Atlantic, roughly 500 kilometres east of southern Argentina — which disputes the sovereignty and briefly invaded in 1982, prompting a ten-week war. The landscape is treeless, windswept moorland and rocky coast; the draw is wildlife, especially seabirds and penguins, in enormous numbers and with little fear of people. Getting around means small aircraft (FIGAS) between grass airstrips, or 4x4 across roadless "camp".

The six below span East Falkland, the small offshore islands, and Stanley. Spring and summer, October to March, is the season, when the penguins and albatross are breeding.

1. Volunteer Point

Volunteer Point, a private farm on the northeast tip of East Falkland, has the largest and most visitor-friendly king penguin colony outside the sub-Antarctic islands — a dense crowd of the metre-tall birds on the grass behind a white-sand beach, alongside gentoo and Magellanic penguins. You can stand within a few metres.

It is reached by a long, rough 4x4 drive from Stanley (about two to three hours each way over open ground), usually as a full-day guided trip.

2. Sea Lion Island

Sea Lion Island, a couple of square kilometres at the southern end of the group, packs in more wildlife per acre than anywhere else in the Falklands: five species of penguin, breeding southern elephant seals hauled out on the beaches, sea lions, giant petrels, and — offshore in season — orcas that come in close to hunt the seals. There is one small lodge, so numbers stay low.

It is a flight from Stanley, and a favourite of wildlife photographers.

3. Saunders Island

Saunders Island, off West Falkland, is a working sheep farm with self-catering accommodation and some of the best seabird watching in the territory. At "The Neck", a narrow isthmus of dunes, black-browed albatross, rockhopper penguins, and imperial cormorants nest side by side on the cliffs, with gentoo, Magellanic, and king penguins on the beaches nearby.

It was also where British forces first landed in 1982; the settlement has a small display.

4. Gypsy Cove

For visitors with only a day — cruise-ship passengers, mostly — Gypsy Cove is the easy wildlife stop: a five-kilometre drive from Stanley to a headland with a white-sand beach (mined in 1982 and still fenced off), a colony of burrow-nesting Magellanic penguins, and cormorants and waterfowl on the pond behind. A short cliff path gives the views.

The rusting wreck of the Lady Elizabeth, a three-masted sailing ship beached in 1913, sits in the harbour nearby.

5. Stanley

Stanley, home to most of the population, is a village-sized capital that feels like a windswept corner of Scotland or the Yorkshire coast — brightly painted tin-roofed houses, a small Anglican cathedral with an arch made from the jawbones of two blue whales, red phone boxes, and pubs serving fish and chips. The Historic Dockyard Museum covers natural history, whaling, and the 1982 war.

The harbour is a graveyard of 19th-century sailing ships that limped in around Cape Horn and were never repaired.

6. The 1982 battlefields

The war of April–June 1982 is still very present in the landscape and the memory. Around Stanley, the hills where the final battles were fought — Mount Longdon, Tumbledown, Two Sisters, Wireless Ridge — carry memorials and, in places, wreckage and fenced minefields (a mine-clearance programme finished in 2020). Goose Green and Darwin, on the isthmus dividing East Falkland, mark the first land battle and have an Argentine cemetery nearby.

Guided battlefield tours run from Stanley; the 1982 Museum tells the story in detail.

The Falklands are a specialist wildlife trip, usually two weeks of island-hopping by light aircraft between farm lodges, plus time in Stanley. Many people arrive on an Antarctic or South Atlantic cruise and see only Stanley and one wildlife site.