Friday we were docked in Punta Arenas. We had booked and early excursion to Magdalena Island to see the penguins - we had to be in the showroom at 7:30 for it. We had a short bus ride to the ferry and then a 90 minute ferry ride out to the island. I’ve never seen a ferry boat quite like this one. It had a vehicle ramp on one side and a long skinny cabin along the other - about the width of a train car. During the ride we went in and out of rain, but had no rain while we were on the island.
Penguins, penguins, penguins… thousands of them. These were Megellan penguins, a variety we hadn’t seen before. They are in the end stage of the molt so some were already in their new feathers and able to go into the water and others were still molting with patches of feathers on their bodies. You could still pick out the young ones even though they are now the same size as the adults, but the feathers they are shedding have a brownish color to them. Instead of making rock nests like the penguins in the Antarctic, these dig burrows into the ground.
Our hour on the island went by much too quickly, but I managed to shoot about 350 pictures. I almost forgot, there is a large lighthouse at the top of the island and many of the people walked up to it. It was lovely… but I spent my time down near the shoreline with my little penguin friends.
Holland America did not give out the Antarctic jackets as they have in the past and a number of the passengers are quite upset as they had planned on them. I had also thought we would be getting them, but realized that we hadn’t been asked for our size request so I purchased a heavy hooded sweater in Ecuador - it’s proved to have been a good purchase!
This morning (Saturday) we passed several big glaciers on our way to Ushuaia. They were spectacular… and would have been even more so if we had had a little bit nicer sky. The subdued light is good to bring out the details of the glacier… but I don’t think you can beat photos with blue skies. We will dock in Ushuaia in a couple hours - it’s trivia time. More later.
Pictires soon - trouble connecting
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