Patagonia, Magdalena Island, Saturday, March 12, 2016

Magdalena Island National Monument - PENGUINS!!  Our ship is anchored in the background.  We arrived at sunrise.

PENGUINS!!  The day Jac has been waiting for!  

We continued our voyage up the Straights of Magellan over night to arrive this morning to Magdalena Island.  Declared a national monument in 1982, Magdalena Island is a breeding location for seabirds, most notably, the Magellanic Penguin. 
 

The lighthouse on Magdalena Island.

Estimates show the island is home to 63,000 breeding pairs.  That's a lot of Penguins!!  If you do the math ... that's over 100,000 penguins!

Approaching the island in our Zodiacs, we could see what appeared to be small dots everywhere!!  As we neared land, the dots turned into Penguins.  EVERYWHERE!!
  

The island is home to over 100,000 Penguins.  Looks like the hillside is littered with penguins!

These birds are relatively small compared to the Emperor Penguins of Antarctica.  About knee high in size, they didn't seem to be bothered by all of the gawking humans. 
 

Penguins watch as we land on their island.

These birds mate for life.  

This penguin is calling the kids for dinner.  Or her mate.  Neither responds.  Selective hearing, I suppose.  She should try texting!

Going about their business of preening, cleaning their burrows, and waddling across the path ahead of us, they kept us mesmerized for hours.  These Penguins have a very interesting "call."  I tried to record it and hopefully I'll be able to download the sound on this blog.
  

Hopefully, you can open this video of the Penguins calling and waddling.  So cute.

Each Penguin has a unique, distinctive sound.  Just as our children can recognize our voice, the chicks and mate recognize the call of a mate or chick.  However, it appears that "selective hearing" carries over into the Penguin colony as well.  I heard lots of calls but didn't see a lot of action.

Happy girl choosing a penguin to pack.

When we scheduled this trip to Patagonia, Jac was more excited about seeing Penguins than anything else on the trip.  Well, she got her fill this morning.  She wanted to take a couple home.  I had a flashback to her childhood and remembered how we came to have 7 dogs, and I quickly searched Jac for unusual motion and bulges under her coat before we loaded the Zodiacs. 

This is Jacqueline's photo.  She captured this couple in their burrow.  

Arriving at the harbor in Punta Arenas.  Again, the weather looks menacing, but not a drop of rain.  

After a nice morning with the Penguins, we returned to the ship, packed our bags and disembarked Australis for the last time to visit Punta Arenas, the capitol of the region and continue our journey through Patagonia.  
  

Local mobile gift shop in Punta Arenas.  We stopped here to find "Merken" a spice that I fell in love with on the ship.  No Merken, but plenty of stuffed Penguins.  

Established in the mid 1800's as a prison, Punta Arenas later grew into an important maritime trade route connecting the west coast of South America and North America.
  

Rubbing the toe of a Yamana Indian chief named Selkan for good luck.  Sure hope it works!!

We walked around the town square for a few minutes before boarding our van to travel further into the wilds of Patagonia.  The scheduled five hour drive turned into a six hour drive that felt like a ten hour drive. 
 

These license plates were on a wall at one of the MANY potty stops we made along the way.  I've never seen anything like it.  Every 20 minutes someone was asking for a pit stop.  That's another reason the drive took so long!

The only man on the trip, Kim ... a boy named KIM??? ... yes, well, anyway, Kim is an inquisitive fellow with lots of bird questions.  Each time a bird was spotted, the van pulled to a stop so we could see the tiny spec in the distance and discuss it's features, where it originated, where it summers, what it eats and why it important to the overall eco-system. 
   

I caught this Condor soaring in search of lunch, during one of our many bird watching stops. The largest bird in the skies with a wing span of over seven feet, makes the Condor a vicious predator.

NatGeo expert, Kitty, is a bird watcher and welcomed each question with lengthy and somewhat informative lectures.  However, by the time he spotted a Condor, I was ready to tie Kim to a stake in the desert-like landscape and allow the Condor to feast!  The ride took FOREVER!  I was hoping to snooze a bit, but each time I would nod off, Kim would see another damn bird!!  Up to this point, Kim and his wife, Ginger, (who squirrels away a roll in a napkin after each meal) have been a relatively nice folks.  But I'm definitely ready to vote them off the island!!
  

Lunch stop on the route to Torres del Paine.  Thank God there were no birds here!!  

We finally arrived ... yes, all of us ... at Tierra Patagonia Hotel, a beautiful lodge located on a bluff overlooking Lake Sarmiento and the infamous Torres del Paine National Park.   This hotel was awarded the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve by National Geographic in 1978.  It literally blends into the geology of the landscape.   (I'll post photos of the hotel in a later post.)  When we pulled up in front of the hotel, I thought we were going into an underground bunker.  The architect's design and  use of local natural wood  finishes as well as huge windows to showcase the mountains of Torres del Paine, create a feeling of blending with the natural surroundings, literally bringing the outside in.  It's as close to "communing with nature" as one can come unless you're camping outside.  It's also as close as I want to come to camping outside.   

Our room here is amazing.  Two stories with floor to ceiling glass overlooking the mountains.  We have a perfect view of the Towers, Sierra Contreras and Sierra del Toro, the whole range that put Patagonia on the map.

We had a lovely dinner at the hotel and tomorrow, we plan to check out this beautiful area.