Partying with Los Pingüinos

[4-5 de Marzo, 2014]
Punta Arenas, Chile

If this isn't going to be everybody's favorite post, I don't know what will be. For two days, for two lucky days considering we also had a birthday to celebrate, we got to spend the day visiting penguins!

The first location we visited was Otway Sound. Close to Punta Arenas, this penguin reserve has, at times, up to 4500 Magenllanic Penguins in the colony. Every year the penguins return to their bitter cold birthplace (this colony) to find their mates and lay their eggs, a process which takes about 6 months. Unfortunate for our timing, we arrived just as the child rearing process had ended and the baby penguins were already gone. In March, most of the adult penguins are just about strong enough to leave as well (they use up a lot of energy feeding their young) and so our colony count in Seno Otway... was roughly what you see in this picture to the left! We guessed there were no more than 15 penguins in the park.

As far as tour advice goes, this tour was terrible. There was no tour, you pay for a driver from Punta Arenas, and, as it was in our case, we were picked up 45 minutes late. The driver limits your time in the park and honks if you are a minute late. Of all of the tours we took in South America this had to be the worst. But it got us where we wanted to go, was relatively inexpensive, and for a split second at least, we got to see our first ever penguin colony!
Since there were so many penguins in the park, we got into the habit of pointing to show our enthusiasm (and to help the photographer find the penguin in the picture.) You'll see that this got annoying in larger colonies where we still couldn't stop pointing for enthusiasm, despite the abundance of penguins.

Also note that in this reserve you walk on boardwalks and don't get that close to the penguins.

There is a lot more vegetation here, however, then the other reserve. You can see every which way the penguins waddle around each day. They leave behind a penguin sized trail of trampled grass which has to be one of the cutest little roads in the world.

A penguin trail

On Eli's birthday, March 5th, our morning started with a special kiss on the nose from God:

Sunrise over the Strait of Magellan

Then we hopped aboard a boat and sailed to Isla Magdalena in the Strait of Magellan.

It took about 2 hours to get to the island. On the boat a tour guide introduced us to the colony and she gave us instructions to return to the boat strictly after one hour of landing. The tour was to a protected reserve on the island, the Monumento Natural Los Pingüinos. As the boat approached you could start to see little black dots all over the island. After yesterday's turn out it was hard to believe those dots could all be penguins, but sure enough they were. This penguin reserve has, at times, over 60,000 penguin couples!

more pointing

a penguin stare down

penguin couples

Little black dots

The penguin dens were close, sometimes on, the walking paths

"Hi"

Well, it was smelly, the penguin feathers were moulting so some looked a bit haggard and I'm pretty sure they lie down in their poo so these pictures were hand selected to tarnish no one's impression of these adorable creatures. They have a rough life, it was a sunny day for us but I still had about 3 jackets on. As expected it was cold and unapologetically windy, though the sun helped a lot. If I could ever repeat this island visit, I would. There is something to be said for being very excited, for holding a camera and having so many subjects, that you just stand there dumbfounded and unable to move.

We were, of course, the last two to reboard the boat. But we did make it up to the light house and we did have time to take one more shot together (no time when penguins are around) 

There are more photos in this album Punta Arenas
And one cute little penguins on parade video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3dad0YW85k

Following the tour, we spent the afternoon exploring Punta Arenas. Many people say there is nothing to see there other than the penguins, but we actually liked the city. It was a good size, clean and had a nice waterfront.

Far from everywhere down here

 The best part about Punta Arenas is, this is where the Cerveza Austral brewery is. It is called, "the most southern brewery in the world" and it also happens to be our favorite beer so far in South America. We purposefully wandered past the brewery with hopes that the town tourist information officer that told us they stopped giving tours was wrong. It didn't look good. They brewery had a guard house and no public entrance but we had enough Spanish to at least try asking the guard. "Hay un tour con guia hoy?" "Si," he said! The guy was wrong! Soon after we were booked on the 3 o'clock tour.

 Eli had quite a day. This would have been  my dream birthday! After the tour we had a beer tasting of all of the Cerveza Austral beers, including the limited released Torres del Paine beer. Check out all of their beers here: https://www.hablemosdecerveza.cl/en/

After a delicious meal, we settled down for Eli's one bday request. Some chips with Mexican salsa. Try finding that in South America! But fortunately the supermarket didn't disappoint (as it rarely does for Eli). All in all, what a day!

Cerviche