Patagonian Grand Adventure
Day six – 18 Feb 2014
Weather – Did I mention that we have a horseshoe up our behinds? Yeah, as we left Puerto Varas for the airport, it started to rain. The sun was waiting for us in Punta Arenas.
I was up at 6:30 and looked out. No fog! I checked online to see that the sun rose at 7:20, so I got my luggage done and went out to watch the sunrise behind the distant broken cloud. Osorno was hidden behind the clouds, but it was a very peaceful way to start a day.
I had another hot chocolate at breakfast, and as we got on to the bus to leave for the airport, it started to rain. It was about an hour to get to the domestic airport in Puerto Montt. Very nice airport. Very new. We checked in and swarmed the souvenir shop since Marcelo suggested we bring snacks for the afternoon. I found chocolate covered coconut.
Lunch of champions.
Our flight was pretty full and left on time, which was nice given how late the day was going to be. It was a two hour flight to Punta Arenas and we left the rain and cloud behind. It soon became broken cloud and then partly cloudy and then sunny.
We arrived at three and were on the road by 3:30. The landscape was a stark contrast to the rocky north. Flat, barren and windy.
Just like home. (Well, we do have a few more trees).
We got on a full sized bus and I made for the back of the bus and settled in. Puerto Natales was about two hundred kilometres away but we had a side trip to see the Magellanic Penguins. The reserve was at the end of a long bumpy dirt road near a granite mining site. Our local guide, Christian, gave us a quick talk on the penguins.
They are warm water penguins so they winter farther north in Peru and Brazil and spend the summer around Punta Arenas. The males will arrive in September and the females will show up a month later with the kids. They stay in the south until February and go north. The males follow in March.
The kids look different from the adults as they are completely white in front and completely black on the back and that helps them with camouflage.
The penguins have burrows in the sand and return to the same burrow every year.
They mate for life and have two chicks a year and live about thirty to thirty-five years. The chicks remain with the parents for two years and mate on the third year. About one in five of the young don’t survive the first year due to predators like killer whales, seals, sea lions and foxes.
After the talk, Marcelo directed us to the boardwalk that goes about six hundred metres out to a viewing shack.
There were two platforms, but Christian said he was at the second one two days prior and there were no penguins, so he suggested spending all our time at the one by the coast.
It was quite windy and most of the tour were bundled up. My fleece with my waterproof gore-tex shell was ideal with a pair of light mitts. A hat would have probably be nice just to keep the hair out of my eyes.
The viewing platform is just a wooden wall with two steps so that you could step up to look out and not disturb the thirty-three penguins sitting on the beach. We got about fifteen minutes to take pics and watch them go for a swim.
Very cute!
By 5:30, we were ready to head out. We went back over the same bumpy dirt road to the highway and headed north to Puerto Natales. It was a gorgeous sunny drive through a flat, rugged landscape.
We stopped to look at the local wild cousin of the llama, the guanaco, and then again to look at a wild ostrich-like bird called the Rhea
The sun didn’t set until well after 9:30, so arriving at the hotel didn’t feel that late. The hotel needed our passports and the Chile immigration form. Marcelo gave us directions to places where we could get dinner, but for me, it was siesta time!
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