Penguinos

I feel like I saw quite a lot yesterday. My overpriced Penguin tour headed out to the boat at 7:30 am. It was a 25 km drive north of punta arenas and the mini van was filled with 5 Israelis, 2 other Americans, 1 Brit, 2 Swiss, 1 Chilean, and myself. Strangely, no women came along for the ride. The boat was a bit strange. Approximately 25 feet in length, it was the biggest zodiac/hard bottom inflatable I´d ever been in. We pounded our way out to Isla Magdalena, a large island smack dab in the middle of the Straight of Magellan. The penguins were there to greet us on the shore. You could hear their loud brays 100 yards before we had even tied up to the dock. We were emphatically told that we were to take no more than 1 hour walking along the designated path, up to a lighthouse at the highpoint of the island and back. To my amazement, the Penguins showed little fear of us as we slowly gawked up the trail, snapping photos at an astounding rate.

This type of penguin is known as the Magellanic Penguin; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellanic_penguin which makes sense considering I was seeing them on an island in the Straight of Magellan. The hour quickly passed and we were hoarded back onto the Zodiac. Our next and final stop was Isla Marta, home to a huge colony of sea lions. This island has special protected status, thus not allowing us to disembark. Actually, I think this protection status was providing protection for us as much as for them because there were so many of these things flopping around on the beach that I´m pretty sure anyone would be pulvarised and then flattened in no time if they tried to make a landing. Like the penguins, they let off loud calls, even louder than those of of the penguins. It sounded a bit like an elephant call if you can imagine what that sounds like. After 20 minutes of sitting 100-200 yards off shore we were told it was time to head back to home base. By now we were quite far out, and the winds had picked up considerably from a few hours earlier. The trip from Magdalena to Marta was already quite rough and everyone knew the ride back would only be longer. I started down below in the covered area, hoping to stay dry. I realized this was a mistake as our route back had us going directly into and over the 6-8 foot swells. Every 20 seconds the boat would take off from the apex of the previous wave and levitate for a few milliseconds before pounding with tremendous force into the next trough. After a few minutes of this a couple of the Israelis looked like they were due to empty their stomachs at any moment so I hastily scrambled into the open air rear cockpit. It was much nicer back there, although the wind blasted your unprotected upper torso, the pounding was much less severe in the back and your legs were able to absorb most of the blows. The best part though of getting into the open air was spotting a couple of Commerson´s Dophins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerson%27s_Dolphin They are only found in this tiny geographical region of extreme southern Patagonia and they are quite beautiful with their unusual white and black markings. They almost look like miniature orchas.