My stomach is no match for the chop on this blustery January morning. Or the ripe stench of sea lions lazing in the sun on nearby Elephant Jason Island. Mike Clarke, the 56-year-old owner of the Condor, sailed this 53-foot trawler 8,237 miles back from Germany and never let the ocean get the best of him. But like every salty Falkland Islander I've met so far, Clarke, who's bundled in a bright-red Mullion survival suit, is also a softie. When he realizes that I've just retched over the rail, he leaves the steering to his mate and offers me a cup of tea.

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"You won't see anything better than what you'll see today!" says Clarke, trying to take my mind off the lurching boat. We're motoring 30 miles from Carcass Island to Steeple Jason, which rises out of the South Atlantic like an Egyptian pyramid, to see more than 170,000 breeding pairs of endangered black-browed albatrosses. That's one-third of the planetary population.

The more time I spend in the Falklands, the more I realize Charles Darwin and I differ. "It is a wretched place," he wrote to his sister Caroline on April 6, 1834. "My excursion would have been longer; but during the whole time it blew a gale of wind with hail & snow...The whole country is more or less elastic peat bog."

Darwin almost scared me off the Falklands. But after reading about the history and wildlife of this 740-island archipelago 300 miles east of Argentina, I grew obsessed with the raw, war-ravaged, penguin-rich country. On a shrinking globe, the Falklands seem to be one place where, as the country's marketing slogan brags, "nature is still in charge."

That's evident as Clarke anchors the Condor and Zodiacs us over to Steeple Jason. Privately owned by the Bronx-based Wildlife Conservation Society, this 1,953-acre island is nearly impossible to get to, and drop-ins aren't welcome. I'm here because I've tagged along with Clarke to pick up some scientists from Falklands Conservation, the country's largest environmental organization. Two of its seven employees have been here for a week counting albatross and penguin chicks.

As Clarke checks up on a few repairs to the island's research cabin, the scientists and I bushwhack through neck-high tussock grass and past sleeping sea lions to the albatross colony. After a few hundred yards, the sky fills with eight-foot wingspans like a flock of soaring 747's. The tussock opens onto a long spit covered with thousands of mud albatross nests, which look like giant bundt cakes frosted in white bird dung. The mothers preen their half-baked downy chicks and serenely watch us as we tiptoe closer to the fray. Southern giant petrels, striated caracaras, and rockhopper penguins mingle with the albatrosses in one massive, harmonious bird commune. The animals collectively take a step closer to check us out. Having seen The Birds, I take a few steps back.

Unlike the ultra-regulated Galápagos, the Falklands' minuscule number of land-based tourists (1,716 last year) allows guests freedom to interact with wildlife. That, combined with the wide-open spaces and the difficulty in accessing sites, is why the Falklands have become a mandatory stop for extreme birders.