Los Pengüinos

To get to the penguin park from Cerro Sombrero we had a 1-2 hr drive mostly on gravel roads.  J kept us entertained by reading Harry Potter out loud (we've been reading a chapter at bedtime every night and we're on the 4th book now).  When his voice got tired, we took a break and listened to Lori Henriques' new album, How Great Can This Day Be.

Eventually we arrived and got to see the sweet little penguins.  There were some new little babies, as well as some eggs that hadn't hatched yet.  I'm usually thrilled with our camera, but was really wishing in this situation that we had a buff zoom lens.  The pictures I'm posting here are cropped severely to get a closer view, but have lost a lot of resolution in the process.  For better photography, check out the home page for the Parque Pengüino Rey.  At any rate, it was so fun to see the penguins in the wild.  Unforgettable.

Several skulls and skeletons on display at the visitor center, comparing the size of the penguins to the guanacos and various other local animals.

A few jumping into the water.....

....  and coming back out.

Ok, I know the penguins are tiny in this video, but it's just so cute the way they waddle... I had to include it!

We visited during mating season and I took the following short clip mostly for the sound--the penguins have a really distinctive call and after you hear the big penguins call, then you can hear the tiny chirpings of the small penguins.  Too sweet for words!

After we left the penguins, it was another slog along the dirt roads, then back across the Straits of Magellan (windy again, no surprise!).....

 .... and to Hotel Mercurio in Punta Arenas.  Of all the towns we've been in, this was surprisingly the most disappointing.  It was bigger and we mistakenly thought it would be a snap to find dinner there, but in fact it was like a huge ghost town at night.  We walked and walked and nothing was open (it was Sunday night at 8pm or so).  Finally after we had covered serious tracks throughout the main downtown area, we found a Best Western hotel right down on the water that had an open restaurant.  The food was lovely and after an extremely short night (we had to head to the airport at 4am) we were back on the plane to Santiago.

On the way down the air had been clearer and views out the airplane were more spectacular, but at that point the camera was buried somewhere in the luggage.  I was prepared on the way back, and even though there was considerably more haze and smog, we still had some lovely scenery to gawk at.  This is just a few minutes before landing in Santiago.