I’m glad that I wasn’t able to see pinguinos in Ancud, because I’ve since heard that the colony there isn’t much to speak of — there are only a couple thousand inhabitants and you can’t even get off the boat there to mingle with them. Outside of Punta Arenas, however, there’s a colony of 50,000 and you can put one in your pocket if you want to.

I went a little crazy with the camera:

Be sure to check out the other pictures (and movies!) on the Flickr page.

The other exciting thing that happened on our little excursion was that a nice German and her daughter behind me in the Zodiac barfed into plastic bags during the entire trip back from the island. It was probably a combination of the meter-and-a-half waves and all the penguin poop that we were inhaling on the colony. But man, were they cute. The penguins, I mean.

Also, I planned on spending only one full day in Punta Arenas, but it seems to be a big Catholic holiday here, and Chilenos have a four-day weekend to travel, and therefore all the buses to Ushuaia were filled pretty quickly. So I’m not leaving until Tuesday, which gives me lots of time to drink instant coffee. But the weather’s very nice, if windy.