Punta Arenas again: Seno Otway Penguin Reserve

There aren’t a lot of good connections into Argentina from Puerto Natales. And, once you get down there and look at a map, you realize just how vast Argentina is (I think it’s something like the 8th largest country in the world.) We didn’t feel like a 36 hour bus ride to some point halfway to Buenos Aires, and weren’t quite sure what to do.

But, while in PA the last time, we had noticed all the signs for penguin tours. So, we decided to go back down and see some more penguins, while we took one more day to make up our minds about where to go next.

I tried to get a place to stay in PA that night, and couldn’t find anything – all hostels seemed to be fully booked. We asked the erratic rock people (hostel we were in our last night in PN), if they could call their local outfit in PA, and they said no problem, and we had a room reservation. On getting there, we discovered the town was nothing like full, and that it had just been a problem with the reservation system. The nice woman who had given us cups of tea on our last arrival was waiting by the bus station, trying to scare up business. She said something about how the reservation system must be broken, as she was nowhere close to full that night. Too bad, we wouldn’t have minded staying with her.

We were looking a map on the bus, figuring out how to walk the 5 or 6 blocks from the bus station, when another American couple in seats next to ours asked us if we knew how to get to Erratic Rock. We had two of the flyers with a map on the back, so we gave them one. Then, we get to the hostel, and discover they beat us there, and took our room. The people in charge of Erratic Rock are nice, but not the most organized bunch in the world – they figured: American couple, this has to be them. That’s what we get for being nice. So, not that big a deal - we slept in a dorm room, by ourselves (the town really wasn’t full, as nobody else showed up the entire day.)

Then, we headed out to get a spot on a Penguin tour. We had seen signs when we were in town last. There are two tours you can take – one takes you to Isla Magdalena, and requires a boat, more time, and more money. The other takes you to Seno Otway (Otway Sound), an hour’s drive away, to a penguin reserve with walking trails.

This was the best money we spent the entire vacation – it was the same price as the other penguin tour we did in Ancud (about 20 bucks a person total, with all the park entrance fees, etc.), but sooo much better. In the other, we saw penguins from a boat, 50 feet away. On this tour, you’re the one in the zoo – you stay on the trails, and the penguins are wandering around. They were close enough to touch, and didn’t seem to take much notice of us. And, it’s chick-raising season, so they all had one or two fluff-balls they were taking care of. I had no idea, but these penguins burrow into the ground to make their nests. There were networks of canyons and tunnels through the grass they had dug, and were kind of hiding in. The young penguins are kind of dark grey in color, and covered with really fuzzy down. They were almost the size of the adults, who were themselves about 18 inches tall (these were Magellanic penguins.) Mid to late December seems to be the best time to go to see the chicks.

They gave us an hour to wander around before taking us back on the bus (I didn’t get this, as we all would gladly have paid to extend for another hour – we had to run back to the bus, as we were afraid of it leaving us. The driver could easily have made another few bucks if all five of us on the tour had chipped in a little extra, and I don’t think any of us would have argued.)

We snapped many many pictures, and discovered the camera takes decent movies as well. We got a great movie, almost a minute long, of a group of penguins lining up to go under a footbridge, kind of eyeing us nervously (we had to back off from the bridge before they would go under), then heading under all in a row, and taking off away from the bridge. Then, Dick van Dyke comes in, and does a silly dance, and sings "Oh, it's a luvly 'oliday with Ev'lyn."… no, wait, that’s someone else’s movie. Anyway, I would post it, but it’s something like 100 megabytes, so I will wait until we get back, and see if I can upload it to youtube or something. (I'd post more pics, but the connection I'm on doesn't have great upload. You'll just have to find us in person to see the rest and see the movies.)

One thing penguins do that we didn't get on film is they walk up to each other and start sword-fighting with their beaks. Penguins can't do anything without being hilarious, so this almost made us fall down. They just go clack-clack-clack... until the dispute is resolved in some way only obvious from a vantage point of 18 inches. Other thing they do that I'd never seen is throwing back their heads and letting loose with the penguin call/song/craw - whatever you want to tall it. It's not a pleasant noise - imagine if seagulls tried to imitate crows - but, again, really funny. They also do this funny thing with their wings, where they flap them up and down rapidly, in what appears to the observer to be an attempt to take off. Sometimes this was combined with the noise they make.

Other than the trek in the park, this was the coolest thing we did on vacation (just edging out Buenos Aries, about which more later.) Make sure you have an extra day in PA to do this when you come down – the tours all seem to leave at 4PM.

Afterwards, we made some dinner, found a little bar in the basement of this really ritzy building off the Plaza de Armas where men were playing cards and there was a guard at the gate who ignored us. Looks like sailors have been coming here for a hundred years. And debated how to get out of town.

The next day, we decided to look up bus ticket prices to Bariloche, Argentina and plane tickets as well. Problem is that there are no direct flights from PA to Bariloche. Only back to Puerto Montt, Chile. Again, the plane tickets turned out to be only about 100 apiece more than the bus, and take two hours instead of days. So, we did it. But, the plane was leaving in about 2.5 hours from the time we bought the ticket, and the travel agent insisted on cash. So, I had to run out, find a cash machine, hope that wasn’t more than the daily limit the bank warned me about (it was, but they seem to ignore the limit, and I didn’t argue), and run back. Then back to the hostel to pack, and find a cab. Our plan was to spend a few hours wandering around Puerto Montt (the ugly town from the trip down), then catch the latest overnight bus to Bariloche. On getting there, we discover (at about 4PM), that the last bus to Bariloche leaves at 3PM, so we have to spent the night in town.

A nice woman kept bugging us to stay in our hostel, and so we agreed. Turns out it was the same woman that our Australian friend in Talca had told us about (“look for a woman named Mercedes in the bus terminal.”) Lucky we ran into her.