Punta Arenas, Magdalena and Antarctica

First the best news: Yes, Tom made it to Antarctica! It was 32 degrees, sleet in the face, walking in 30 mph wind, on rocks, all outdoors. The wind was too much to take the zodiac boats on the water, so they just walked around for 4 hours. He's thrilled. (He also said it was the best decision I ever made to NOT go myself.)

Instead of Antarctica, Jackie and I went to Magdalena Island to see penguins. These are the chinstrap penguins, also called jackass penguins because of the braying sound they make. They were everywhere on the island, some 120,000 of them. While the sky was blue with puffy white clouds, it was also windy. Very windy. It was the make-your-eyes-water sort of windy. We loved it, but did spend much of our time in the semi-protected part of the island. This was good for two reasons: 1. The big crowds pushed ahead (there were a bunch of those people who think they have to be in front of everyone else) and that left us in relative quiet, so the Penguins took no notice of us few stragglers and behaved normally. 2. It wasn't as windy.

The great part was the Penguins were unafraid of us, and they waddled around right next to us. Touchably close if we had wanted. We stayed and watched as group of five with adults and fuzzy chicks left their burrow, waddled down the slope to the rocky beach, hopped across the rocky beach and then flopped forward into the water where they zipped away underwater.

We were again the lucky ones when we returned to the ship to discover our tour was the only one of three to have reached the island due to weather. We were on the old, slow, heavy ferryboat. It was built of metal and big and had no trouble with the waves and wind. But it took us 2 hours to get there and 2.5 back. The other tours were more expensive, but advertised they used the fast speedboats that reached the island in half the time. But they could not handle the wind-whipped waves, and had to cancel. I did notice that the waves and wind did not stop one tiny Chilean fishing boat from setting out that day.

Tomorrow is now today, as I was too tired to write this post before bed, but it is 6 am as I write. The sun is up, but the weather has descended for now, and all we can see to either side of the Beagle channel is mist shrouded peaks and hills. It looks to be another grey day, much like Washington or Oregon.

We're due to arrive in Ushuaia, Argentina at noon today and take a small boat out into the channel for wildlife and glacier viewing. I'll report on that tomorrow, but for now we are just watching the bottom of the world drift by.