If there´s one excursion almost every wildlife-minded visitor should make from capital Stanley, it´s this one - and the journey to get here shows just how quickly "civilization" disappears in the Falkland Islands once you leave the capital and venture into what islanders call "Camp" (everything outside town, the name taken from the Spanish campo, meaning countryside). After leaving the road, four-wheel-drive vehicles cross miles of open country to reach a remote South Atlantic beach, a trip that can take 2½ to three hours each way. The payoff is one of the Falklands' great wildlife spectacles. Volunteer Point is home to the archipelago´s largest readily accessible colony of king penguins, their elegant black, white and golden-orange forms gathering in extraordinary numbers against a landscape of pale sand and tussock grass. Gentoo and Magellanic penguins breed here as well, making it possible to see three very different species in a single outing. Unlike wildlife encounters in many heavily visited destinations, the experience still feels remarkably uncrowded. There are no grand visitor complexes or elaborate boardwalk systems separating travelers from the landscape. The prevailing sensation is simply one of enormous space shared with an improbable number of penguins.
Read more in my post Are the Falkland Islands Worth Visiting?
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