Back down South

just catching up after a few trips in March. The first trip was back to the Falklands again, hopefully this is to be my last visit for a while because its a long old trip. this time the weather was fantastic and I managed some pictures on the approach to Mount Pleasant.

The above photo shows Port Stanley (all of it) I was sat next to a visiting Surgeon who tells me the blue building at the top of the picture is the hospital.

The wreck of the sailing ship the Lady Elizabeth can be seen in this photo, more information on the ship can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Elizabeth_(1879)

The aircraft above was photographed at Mount Pleasant and is operated by the British Antartic Survey from the Rothera base in the Antartic. it had arrived the previous day with a passengers leaving after the southern summer operation and was on the way back to the ice. The crew were saying the flight takes about 5 hours and that this was their last trip South for the season. the following day they were due to fly to Punta Arenas with more passengers before continuing on to Calgary where the aircraft spends the Northern Summer and will be flying South again next season. more can be found on the BAS at http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/index.php

on departure we got an escort from the Eurofighters, I have made four trips and this was the first time I have managed to take any air to Air photographs.

There were some Girl Guides on the aircraft that had become trapped in the Falklands as theri flight back to the UK via Chile had been cancelled due to the earthquake there. they had managed to get a lift on our flight and were waving at the pilots out of the windows, the polits of the Eurofighters waved back .... too cool !!!