Punta Arenas, Chile: Home of the Penguins!!!

We simple couldn’t get this far and not “walk among the penguins” so this day we sacrificed our usual morning sleep-in to leave for penguin park. The terrain actually looked a great deal like Montana except for the water. The rolling hills, grass lands and scrub brush could have been anywhere from the Antelope Valley to Montana as far as I could tell. We turned off the highway and traveled most of the way on rough unpaved road. Finally we reached the end of the road and from here we walked about a mile to the penguin colony. Sounds great Right? Well I forgot to factor in the temperature and the wind. It was cold but that wasn’t even the problem. The wind was more than gale force. I had so many layers on that I already walked like a penguin but when the wind blew under my outer jacket I looked like I was about to take flight. Since there was so much uneven ground, Hal took his walking stick with him. Every time he tried to put it down the wind would blow it out from under him. Most of the people on our bus went a few hundred feet, maybe saw one penguin and headed back to the café for hot chocolate. Since we had gone that far (and paid out money) we were determined to get the full experience of “walking among the Penguin Colony”. We braved it through, walked the full mile out to the colony and all the way back, the bus waited for us and we are glad to be able to say “we did it”. We just won’t mention how many hours we slept that afternoon after returning to the ship. We saw about 25-30 birds, they were about 12-15 inches tall and very cute. Most of them were buried in their holes because, silly, it was cold and windy outside.

Now for the real story!!! The place looked like Wyoming. The wind was 65 MPH plus and the birds were 28 inches high. We also saw a condor, lots of ostrich like birds called Reas, a gray fox and a rabbit. The wind was unbelievable, I have never seen anything like it. HAL

OK, I meant to say Wyoming – details!!!