Doko esta los pinguinos y red cap?

First: Origins of the title - I am still mixing my limited Japanese with my even more limited Espanol by asking Doko (where in Japanese) instead of Donde when asking Where something is....sounds the same, right? Another tip for those that aren't use to fizzy or gaseous water...don't buy the blue capped water...its agua con gas. When you are in a rush and quickly buy water, forget that South Americans like water with gas, it makes for an interesting introduction to your neighbor on the bus after the bus has shaken the bottle up a bit!

Oct 6, 2009

We arrived to Punta Arenas around 5:00PM. Hostel and hotels were very expensive on the internet, so we made the risky call of depending on finding cheap deals at the PA bus station. Fortunately, two hostels were represented and giving bargains for overnight stays. We negotiated with two hostels and ending up getting a three night stay for a very affordable price. It wasn’t the most comfortable experience, especially for Rumi, because the hustlers would not give us any space to discuss our options alone. Because they were so pushy, I had no problem “low-balling” both and got some great information on a penguin tour.
We enjoyed the free shuttle straight to the hostel and found the place to be relatively empty but friendly (the advantage for traveling in the tourist off-season). The house was not constructed well or was prematurely constructed before the ground settled though. I felt like we were staying in a leaning house and none of the doors fit properly in their doorways! All in good fun.

That night we were both tired so we went for a walk to the main square and found a restaurant nearby. We ate pichanga - basically another conglomeration of meats and French fries. Not the most healthy, but we were starving and tired and didn’t care! We ate dinner and walked back in the decently cold weather (not as bad as we expected for Chilly Chile’s most southern city).

Oct 7, 2009

I decided to go for a run and check out the city. I ended up finding the beach and followed the coastline through some neighborhoods. I doubt too many people run here, because I received some very strange looks! In the entire run, I managed to escape with only one dog chase…not bad!

When I returned, we stocked up on the free breakfast (bread, jelly, tea) and headed out for the day. We walked a similar path to my run and took some pictures. Our main focus was finding a penguin tour. Because of siesta, a tourist’s arch nemesis, we had to wait until around 4:00PM to get some more information. We thought we may find a cheaper deal, but were mistaken. We also found that the most-frequented tourist information counters told everyone that there were no penguin tours in the off-season. Not to be discouraged, we ended up booking a less frequented tour (escort) with Laguna Azul to Seno Otway. This location is closed to tourists but still “open” for scientific observation. Our guide would curiously ask, “how did you find us?”

After our main mission for the day was accomplished, we went to the main square, Plaza Munoz Gamero. It is surrounded by a nice church, museums for the great explorer Magellan (first to command a fleet that circumnavigated the globe and also happened upon that area of the world), and a cool street market. A very popular square, we were privileged to find kids from a school field trip painting their rendition of the square on child-size easels.

We decided to take our hostel’s advice on restaurants and went to La Tasca near Magellan’s famous statue. It was slightly expensive so we both decided to order a chicken dish - unfortunately they were conveniently completely out of chicken, so we were forced to order more expensive stuff. I got steak and Punta Arenas beer and Rumi ordered fettuccine con frutas del mar (seafood). Very good. It was very cold afterwards so we headed back early that night.

Oct 8, 2009

Our penguin tour didn’t start until 2:30PM so we decided it would be smart to book our bus for the next day. There are only certain companies that travel to Ushuaia and they leave on different days. The first place we went to said the earliest we could go was two weeks away! In a slight panicked state we rushed over to the only other company, Pacheco, that departs on Friday. Fortunately they had a few available spots near the rear of the bus. Rumi likes the front better because she gets car sick. Up until this we were getting the front seat on the second deck of most of the buses - great panoramic view.
Obtaining the bus tickets was actually very time consuming and more stressful than I am describing, so we actually had to rush to lunch in order to make our penguin tour. We found somewhere quickly, Quixote. I ordered tomato soup and a steak. Rumi got an avocado/chicken appetizer and an avocado salad (which consisted of solely two avocados totaling her avocado intake to FOUR - she was avocadoed out!).
We were picked up for the tour with two older French couples by our guide, Christian. He later would tell us that he was relatively new to this particular tour and it was the best day he observed so far. The French couples were friendly and one spoke English/Spanish/French/Portuguese very well.

The journey consisted of a 90 min ride to the coast. Then we trekked about 11 km to the observation post. The trek included forging four “rivers” (or streams). Rumi and I were able to jump the first couple rivers. The rest of the rivers she could basically walk through because of her gortex shoes. I decided to use Christian’s invention of some ductaped plastic “leg” bags which proved to be not so waterproof! Because this tour was later in the evening, along the chilly windy coast of the bottom of the world, I was a little worried about having cold wet feet! Rumi was nice enough (and slightly reluctant!) to put my wet socks in her back pocket to warm and dry them. We continued the trek with gorgeous scenery - very Patagonia-esque! The trek there seemed to be a very short 11km because we were all very excited. Once we got to the post, Christian gave a short brief and told us to quietly follow him. The penguins are not use to tourists in this location and will run to the water or hide in their tunnels if you spook them. We first observed their breeding grounds where we found “couples” hovering over their nests or tunnels. Christian said, “if you see two of them, ones a male and the other a female….if you see one, it’s a male.” Wonder where the single females hang out? The observation area for these penguins was similar to that of a zoo, so it was nice, but not what we came for!

Next Christian had us hold back as he carefully made his way close to the coast for the other observation point. He basically had us “low-crawl” one-by-one to get a spot at the post. At this location we solely had some ocean driftwood separating us from the penguins - absolutely fantastic. Rumi took 9,896,325 pictures I think! I’m sure the view from the penguin’s view was more funny than ours - four Frenchies, a Canuck, and a Yankee - well, just our heads peaking around snapping photos of them.

After about an hour Christian motioned for us to start heading back; he wanted to cover as much ground as possible before nightfall. Our walk back was fantastic because of views with the setting sun. I asked Christian about the explorer Magellan because we have seen lots of Magellan statues and museums in Chile. Also Punta Arenas was particularly a major part of the explorer’s life, so we were curious to learn more about him. Christian replied that Michael Jackson was much more famous and that was the end of that conversation.

It was very cold and some of us were wet from the returning “river” crossings, so we were excited to get back in the van for the ride back. Christian surprised us with hot chocolate and cookies. Rumi had ¾ of a cup of cocoa powder with about ¼ water. We were surprisingly very tired after this trek, but it made the trip to Punta Arenas well worth the travel.

Oct 9, 2009

The next morning we woke up early to catch our Ushuaia bus via Rio Grande leaving at 8:30. Sad to see that the supermarket was closed so Justin ran around town to find a place to buy some water and chips (couldn’t find anything else). I hadn’t had potato chips in so long so I wasn’t complaining!

On the bus, we were trying to look for pink flamingos but Justin fell asleep. The sleep wasn’t very long so we were able to find ostriches, sheep, lambs, alpacas, cattle and finally flamingos! Some of the ostriches we were right beside the road. We saw pools with hundreds of flamingoes as well…we weren’t able to take very good pictures from the moving bus though.

---

---

---