Camping at Elephant Beach Farm

Hi

Last weekend I went camping with Jacob and Abi. We joined a bigger group, the Conservation Watchgroup, which Jacob is a member of. It's about 2 hours from the base and is close to the coast. It was tipping it down and blowing a gale when we arrived so we popped into the house for a cup of tea while mad people tried to put up their tents! As soon as the sun came out we then pitched the tent, with help. I'd borrowed one from the store room here and it was great, especially as another family had the same one so they helped to put up our one! Allen didn't make it on the trip due to work, he's playing war this week and has loads to do.

So after a picnic lunch we went off on our first off road proper experience. Abi and I were in a car with one of the Stanley ladies called Anna. She was lovely and was driving a Freelander (like ours out here), so we gave me lots of confidence about driving off road. We stopped to look at a colony of penguins, Jacob and Abi returned to the cars covered in penguin poo - delightful. Luckily they were head to toe in waterproofs as at the next stop, a beach to clean, it tipped it down. So all of the penguin poo was washed off. There are some photos from the camp site and the beach we cleaned. Off to the next beach where they did racing games, played on a piece of drift wood and made an impressive castle. After a 40 min drive back we settled down to sorting the BBQ, calm weather returned and it was a fun night of games and wine. Eventually got to sleep around midnight with Abi crammed into my sleeping bag as she was cold!

We awoke to ice on the tent but the sun soon melted it all off. After taking the tent down off we went on another off road experience this time to Cape Dolphin. I went in a car with Sally this time, another Falkland lady. We went to see the elephant seals, no dolphins though. It was a much longer drive with Sally letting every child in the car sit on her lap and drive. Abi thought this was wonderful, Jacob was in another car and was a tad jealous, I was just scared really! We stopped for a picnic in the tussock grass before returning and then getting into our own cars to drive back to base. A brilliant weekend with both the kids wanting to go camping straight away again, we will but perhaps in a couple of weeks!

Rachael.