MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lonely Planet brings out Guide to Falklands and South Georgia.

The Falkland Islands and South Georgia are the focus of a new travel guide by the world's leading independent travel publisher.

In November, after many years of featuring the Falkland Islands in its guides to South America, Argentina and Chile, finally Lonely Planet has brought out its first ever guide devoted exclusively to the Falkland Islands and South Georgia.

The author of the new guide is Tony Wheeler, who with his wife Maureen began Lonely Planet in the 1970s with a guide called Across Asia on the Cheap, based on the couple's own journey from London, through Asia to Australia, where they are now based. Tony and Maureen are still the owners of the company and still "on the road" writing about their travels, though the company now employs 150 authors and has offices in the US, UK, and France, as well as Australia.

Recently Tony Wheeler talked to the BBC's Dee Palmer for the World Service's Calling the Falklands programme, which is re-broadcast in the Islands by the Falkland Islands Broadcasting Service.

Mr. Wheeler said that his first visit to the Falklands on a cruise ship was less than auspicious; he had only a day in Stanley and it poured with rain all the time. Fortunately, on his second visit, by air, he enjoyed two and a half weeks of "really beautiful weather" and only three days when the weather was "grey and horrible".

Aside from this research trip, Mr. Wheeler paid tribute to the prompt help he had received from the Falklands Tourist Board and others in making sure that the information in the guide was correct and up to date.

The new guide contains sections on the Islands' flora and fauna and on the individual outlying islands of the Falklands, which, according to Mr. Wheeler are the most interesting in terms of "giving a feeling of what Falklands life must have been like in the old days "

"Of course" added Wheeler," you want to see Stanley: I think Stanley is a really fascinating little town; it's an attractive little town as well."

The new guide is not the only evidence of Tony Wheeler's enthusiasm for the Falkland Islands. Just recently, celebrating a significant anniversary in his career as a traveler and travel publisher, Mr. Wheeler published a list if his favourite places in the world. In the ?Favourite Islands' category, he made two choices: Bora Bora in the South Pacific and Carcass Island in the Falklands.

John Fowler (MP) Stanley

The Falklands & South Georgia Island 1st Edition Tony Wheeler Published November 2004 ISBN: 1740596439 200 pp / 12 pp colour / 33 maps US$27.99 - AUS$42.9 - UK£18.99 Part of the Lonely Planet series: Regional Guides