They could talk about the penguins. They could talk about the wind. But the tourists to the Falklands have a far more enjoyable topic of conversation: how people back home reacted when they mentioned where they were going for a holiday. 'They treated me like there was a death in the family. They just didn't know what to say,' laughed one man in his fifties. 'My colleague just stared at me and said, "You're mad",' a woman from Dover said.
It's difficult to imagine how the Falklands could have had more negative publicity since everyone learnt they were in the South Atlantic, not the Outer Hebrides, when Argentina tried to relieve the UK of one of its colonial burdens 20 years ago. On 2 April 1982, the Falklands went from blissful anonymity to being a battle zone on every TV bulletin and front page, the site of the last war on British territory and the graveyard for hundreds of soldiers.
When people learnt what was there - an impoverished sheep farm the size of Wales with fewer than 2,000 people - they wondered whether it was worth saving. When TV crews and war correspondents actually got there, they knew it wasn't worth saving. Bitterly cold, barren, treeless, swept by driving snow and maddening wind - it was hard to imagine a more worthless scrap of the planet. Since the time this image was burnt into everyone's mind, no journalist has sought to write a nice word. The Observer's own war correspondent at the time, Patrick Bishop, wrote recently in the Daily Telegraph: 'I had forgotten what a dump it was, but a few seconds of television footage brought it all swirling back. The sleet- and rain-soaked hillsides, the ankle-breaking scree, the corrugated iron roofs of the ramshackle settlements, the almost total absence of trees. No one, apart from a few masochistic SAS types, liked the Falklands.'
Except, that is, the people who live there - and the tourists who are now making the long trek there in numbers that have grown from 200 to 1,500 a year in the last 10 years. Most go on organised tours - walking, wildlife, and fishing trips - but independent travellers are starting to make their presence felt.
Not only are the tourists coming; they can't stop themselves returning. I was stunned, when I met my first group of tourists sitting round a dinner table at the old manager's house in Port Howard, the largest private sheep farm in the islands, to learn that all of them had been before. Some had been three times, one had come five times, and one couple were on their seventh holiday to the islands in seven years. None could resist gushing - they had found a gem that no one else knew about.
It's true there are plenty of reasons not to go to the Falklands. Don't go if you like walking in dappled forests, swimming in warm waters, or get distraught by strong winds turning your perfect hairdo into a haystack. Because the Falklands certainly are windy. With an average windspeed of 17 knots, the swirling mass of South Atlantic air is forever with you on this rocky outpost in the middle of one of the world's most tempestuous oceans.
But also don't come if you like cross-country skiing. Despite the images of snow-smeared battlefields, the Falklands are not particularly cold. They are no closer to the South Pole than Wales is to the North Pole, although while our shores are soothed by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream Drift, the Falklands are chilled by the melt water of Antarctica. They get a sprinkling of snow at most in winter, and in summer, they can get long, sunny days. Over the year, they have the same average hours of sunshine as the UK, and less rainfall. You can tell the first-time, complacent tourists in the Falklands from their sunburn.
The reality is that for people with a taste for the unusual, the Falklands are an addictive drug which enters the blood, compelling them to return time and again. The islands have a haunting, rock-strewn beauty; perfect white, wide sandy beaches; such spectacular, friendly wildlife that some of David Attenborough's films have been shot there; and the disarming - almost alarming - hospitality and intimacy of a tiny community four hours' flight away from their nearest neighbours. Going to the Falklands is not just a trip to the other side of the world, but a trip back to the golden days after the Second World War when the bank manager and teacher were pillars of the community, and mothers left their babies in prams outside when they went into shops.
Most of those who get there see it as a secret treasure trove locked away in the South Atlantic. William Wagstaff, a tour leader on his ninth trip, and author of the first guide dedicated to the Falklands (The Falkland Islands, by Bradt Travel Guides), grappled to explain to me its unique appeal: 'It's the very niceness of it. There is spectacular wildlife. It's the vastness of it - you see for miles and there is no evidence of man. It's totally uncommercialised.'
The difficulty for those responsible for promoting the Falklands as a tourist destination is that when Fleet Street's finest descended en masse two decades ago, it not only happened to be their winter - it was a particularly cold one at that. 'It's the same as if there was a snow storm in Hyde Park, so you put a fence around it and say never go there again,' laments John Fowler, manager of tourism for the islands. The spectacular ability of the London media to misrepresent the Falklands even extends to the name of its capital, which even now newspapers, guidebooks and just about everyone in Britain calls Port Stanley. It comes as a bit of a surprise when you get there to find that this charming little town is actually called Stanley, which happens to have a port, and there is no such place as Port Stanley, any more than there is Port Felixstowe in East Anglia.
The islands face more drawbacks as a tourist destination than just bad publicity. They are undeniably remote, expensive to get to, and have a limited number of hotels and guest houses once you are there. But that just enhances their exclusive charm, and adds to the thrill.
The adventure begins before you leave the ground. The only direct flight to the Falklands from the UK is on an ancient RAF Tristar plane that shuttles between the mother country and colony, flying the entire inky vastness of north and south Atlantic for 18 hours, stopping off only at another British colony, the tiny tropical volcano of Ascension Island. Although the flight is military in purpose - to send out all the troops on their four month tours of duty - they also take ordinary commercial passengers, but at a price. At around £1,400, it is the most expensive economy fare flight it is possible to take from the UK. It is also the most unusual.
You leave from the RAF base at Brize Norton, near Oxford, and board a plane that has been adapted for what the RAF charmingly call 'self-loading cargo'. You sit in rows with plenty of leg room and many of the seats taken out to make way for stretchers for the travelling injured. The air stewards are RAF personnel wearing khaki uniforms, serving food that most other airlines stopped inflicting on passengers decades ago. Richard Branson has little to worry about.
The military theme continues on the ground after you land at Mount Pleasant Airport, the UK's army base. As you get off, soldiers give a demonstration about the mines and shells that still litter the islands, and the effect they can have on you. After scaring every civilian about the 25,000 live mines in over 100 different minefields, they then drop the real bombshell: actually, not one civilian has ever been injured by a mine in the Falklands. All the minefields are fenced off and marked with warning signs so obvious even the sheep steer clear.
Once you leave the military airfield, you quickly see just how much the Falklands are a little splinter of Britain 8,000 miles away. They drive on the left, use pounds, have red phone boxes and Georgian red pillar boxes. The TV and radio stations are British, and despite being there for up to seven generations, they all refer to Britain as 'home'.
You can walk around Stanley in half-an- hour, learn about the war in the war museum, look at the whalebone arch by the cathedral, and pay tribute to the war dead at the memorial. But more than that you can just absorb - admire the quaintness of the brightly coloured tin roofs, be puzzled by the ancient shipwrecks that litter the harbour, and breathe in the wilderness on the opposite shore. You can drop by the various bars and restaurants, where there will be no one to talk to but the locals. Out of town you can take a battlefield tour, to see all the placements and trenches used in the battle of Tumbledown hill, or you can hot foot it to Volunteer Point and canoodle with the colony of king penguins. Four feet tall, kitted out in black tie with yellow scarves, they are all that penguins should be: comic, curious, utterly delightful.
Then you must take a trip out to the real Falklands - 'camp' as the islanders call anything that isn't Stanley. I took a trip on one of the world's cutest airlines, the Falkland Islands Government Air Service - so cute, you can sell your used tickets to collectors for $5 (£3.50) on the internet. Eight-seater propeller planes connect a network of around 40 landing strips for every hamlet, farm and larger islets. The joy comes when you wait for a flight to land. You have to drive your Land-Rover (a compulsory vehicle in camp) around the strip tootling your horn, chasing off all the sheep and geese. You then have to hitch your Land-Rover up to a little fire trailer, basically a mobile fire extinguisher, to be the fire rescue service for when the plane lands. Relax, though - they've never had an accident that has resulted in injury.
On the flight to West Falkland's city, Port Howard (population 21), we flew low over the boggy, rocky landscape, sheep scattering below us, along valleys, over hills, across the Falklands Sound, and descended into the heart of the 200,000 acre farm, 45 miles and 40,000 sheep from tip to tip. I was met by the delightfully eccentric Hattie Lee, who runs the luxurious Port Howard Lodge and cooks up the best meals on the island. Visitors are given a tour of the farm, its sheep sheds, shearing equipment, and its school - which has just one pupil, one teacher, and its own arts and crafts cupboard.
The teacher explained to us the complexities of running a school of one. In a community this small, you are not so much a visitor as a guest. Every interaction is personal, intimate, everyone knows everyone.
If you're military minded you can admire the remains of an Argentine Mirage fighter, if you're a twitcher you can admire the birds in the surrounding countryside. If, like me, you're a walker you can head for the hills. Mount Maria is over 2000ft high - as high as most peaks in the Lake District - from the summit of which you get fabulous views across the islands that splatter out across the South Atlantic. Walking in the Falklands is walking close to nature. There are so few people there are no paths - you just wander where you want. There are so few walkers you will never meet another one. There are so few buildings you will never bump into one. It is just you, the hills, the sheep and the never-ending wind.
I then flew to Sea Lion Island, which reputedly has the best wildlife in the Falklands. Certainly, at five miles long and a mile wide, you can see pretty much all of it in a day - and the animals, apart from the sea lions, are so unwary of man you can approach to within a few feet.
The most mesmerising sight is colonies of rockhopper penguins on top of precipitous cliffs pounded by the Atlantic, tiny flightless birds skipping amid the wildest forces of nature. The most comic are the gentoo penguins, waddling around, wings outstretched, as they cross the sandy beaches on their treks to and from the sea. The most curious are the jackass penguins that bray like donkeys and burrow underground. The biggest are the elephant seals - four tons of blubber floundering around and staring at you with beady eyes. The biggest, that is, unless you catch sight of a killer whale at sea.
And then it's home, over the vast jigsaw of islets and channels back to Stanley, which after a week out in camp, seems not so much a village as a vast metropolis.
Factfile
When to go: October to March, which is the Falklands summer. The weather is roughly equivalent to the Scottish Highlands.
How to go: It is possible to travel independently, but you must book all your accommodation in advance since the number of hotels are limited. There are a number of operators offering tours to the Falklands, in addition to the growing number offering the Islands as a two-centre trip with Chile, or as a stop on an Antarctic or South American cruise. Prices for two-week holidays range from around £2,000 to £4,000.
Tour operators: South American Experience (020 7976 5511); Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000); Go Fishing Worldwide (020 8742 1556); Island Holidays (01764 670107); Naturetrek (01962 733051); Quark Expeditions (01494 464080); Steppes Latin America (01285 885333); The Travelling Naturalist (01305 267994)
Getting there: The only direct flight from the UK is from Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, to Mount Pleasant, on an RAF Tristar. It takes 18 hours. Return flights cost from £1,494 (plus £10 tax). Contact the travel co-ordinator at the Falkland Islands Government Office in London (020 7222 2542). There is a weekly LanChile (01293 596606) flight connecting Santiago, Chile, and Mount Pleasant, stopping en route at Punta Arenas and Puerto Montt (and once a month at Rio Gallegos, Argentina). Return flights from UK to the Falkland Islands are available from £1,017.70.
Where to stay: The Upland Goose Hotel (00 500 21455), and the Malvina House Hotel (00 500 21355) are the main hotels in Stanley. Darwin House Lodge (00 500 32255), Goose Green, is recommended for fishing. Port Howard Lodge (00 500 42187; www.port-howard.com), Port Howard, is recommended for walking and birdwatching. Sea Lion Lodge (00 500 32004), Sea Lion Island, is recommended for wildlife.
Getting around: The Falklands Island Government Air Service (00 500 27219) is the only operator of internal flights. For example Stanley-Port Howard costs £47.08 and Stanley-Sea Lion Island costs £47.67 (both one way).
For more information: The only guide book is The Falkland Islands: Bradt Travel Guide. You can order a copy for £11.95 inc p&p (rrp £13.95) through the Observer Books Service on 0870 066 7989. The Falkland Islands Tourist Board (020 7222 2542). The Falkland Islands Government. The Falkland Islands.
