Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Last Day on the Strait - Penguins!

And what a day!  Started out early to Magdalena Island where there is a colony of Magellan penguins - thousands of them.  They dig holes in the ground with their flippers and stuff them with kelp.  They are molting right now, so they are pulling out their feathers  from their burrows.  You have to watch where you are going as it would be easy to step on one crossing the trail.  They are very noisy with several different vocalizatioins. They are very funny when they flap their wings and shake their tails.
We then took a 4.5 hour van ride to our hotel at Torre del Paine.  It is amazing country, quite desolate in places.  Some of it looks like eastern Washington.  Stopped at a small restaurant for lunch - tuna salad in a tomato half, split pea soup and fruit cocktail out of the can.  The propriators were so nice and no one spoke English.  My Spanish is getting better.  Along the way we saw rheas, a kind of llama that only lives here and a fox as well as thousands of sheep.  The hotel is very swanky - all wood, spare in decor and a killer view of the lake and mountains if the clouds lift. Dinner was up scale with steak or salmon (starting to see a trend here) expertly prepared.  There are numerous excursions to chose from, so we selected 2 half day hikes for today (well Dean and JoAnn will probably only go on the morning one) and a full day tour to highlights the next day.
As I am writing this early in the morning, the wind is howling like a banshee.  It must be >80mph.  Doubt there will be much hiking.  Now where is the coffee?
Sunrise

















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