Pingu...and about 200,000 of his friends

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Getting down to Patagonia, I quickly discovered, is not the easiest of things to do. For one thing, there aren't any roads south through Chile. The furthest south you can go by road in Chile is the Carretera Austral, which stops someway north of here. When I started looking at my options for coming here, they all seemed to be either expensive (flying), take a long time (by bus through Argentina) or both (the Navimag ferry from Puerto Montt). In the end I decided to fly - after all, I'm here to get out and experience Patagonia, not spend hours stuck on a bus. And I can always pay the money back when I get home :-)

The view from the plane on the way down to Punta Arenas was spectacular. We flew over the Fitz Roy Massif, mainly covered in cloud (at least from my side of the plane - I think there was a better view from the other side) and the Torres del Paine. In fact, the pilot treated the flight like a sightseeing tour and did a big circle over the torres, so everyone could get a get good view. It was absolutely stunning, just amazing...well, see for yourself.

Pretty much everyone else on the plane, I guess, was heading straight onto a bus to Puerto Natales, the starting point for the Torres del Paine National Park. I, on other hand, had an appointment with the pinguinos at the Isla Magdalena. This is an island in the Straits of Magellan, and every summer over 60,000 pairs of penguins come here to breed. They each have on average two babies...so that's a lot of penguins. Having not really seen the penguins in Ancud, I was so happy to be surrounded by so many penguins. And compared to the penguin parade at Phillip Island in Melbourne, this was a much less staged, touristy experience. The boat to the island takes two hours, then you have an hour to spend on the island. It's still pretty controlled, in that you have to stick to the paths, so you don't disturb the penguins. However, the penguins are still really close, and of course they don't recognise paths so they would frequently cross over right in front of people. I went a bit snap happy, taking loads of photos...but they're just so cute!!

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Photos

Las Torres del Paine
Wow!

The perfect penguin shot?
I spent ages trying to get the perfect shot...not sure if this is it, but it's my favourite anyway

Fits Roy Massif
You can just see it peeking out from the cloud

Muchos pinguinos
That's a lot of penguins...and there are plenty more!

Penguin lovin'
Well, it was Valentine's Day :-)

Los pinguinos
That's it, I'm off!