We booked a trip to see some penguins for today. When we got up we had a shock, it was really
sunny (at 6 in the morning, we have long days here), so our warm gear we were
wearing is a bit redundant. So is our
iPhone as we find out that the local shops are all out of MicroSims for
them. Nobody is cutting up a regular one
here.
Our trip to the penguins involves an hour and a half trip to
a remote local ranch, which happens to be the oldest on the island of Tierra
Del Fuego. The scenery on the way was
pretty amazing, and the tour guides actually had a number of photo stops built
into the trip. This is unusual where
normally they want to get you to the objective and back as quickly as possible. The transfer from the ranch to the island
involves a very fast trip across the Beagle Channel in a Zodiac speedboat. As we approach we see all the big ships
taking photos of the penguins from offshore, but we were the envy of them all
as we were able to land and get off.
Taking pictures of the penguins themselves was a lot of fun. We were supposed to keep 3 metres away from them, but this proved impossible,
they were everywhere. We were within
arm’s length of them on a number of occasions.
We spent an hour on the island, before we went the 5 minutes back to the
ranch. At the ranch we had a little time
to look around, and see some sea-mammal skeletons in a little museum. Then we got a bonus, normally our trip is one
of two a day so there are some time constraints, but this time it was actually
an extra third trip, and we had some extra time, so we went to a restaurant
specialising in lamb barbeques where we had all we can eat Patagonian
lamb. It was delicious, if a little
expensive.
In the evening after we recovered from the excitement of the
trip we went to the Irish pub in town.
Here we had a few of the local brews, including their own green beer
(not recommended) but there was a nice atmosphere. The usual Irish stuff lined the wall, but the
best (and strangest) thing was the R2D2 sitting by the door.
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