Penguins and Welsh Tea

So, I’m changing the style of the blog to keep up a bit with the pace of the trip. This means that many of the entries will be fairly quick and have some good photos, but maybe not a ton of content. I will still try to get some longer commentaries out there, but would prefer not to get behind events as they unfold.

So, with that in mind, yesterday we went out to Punto Tumbo to see the largest colony of Magellanic Penguins on the continent. It numbers over a half million birds and is spread over many hectares. 

Some of the pairs walk over a kilometer inland to get to their nest. It is quite a different setting from what you might expect with penguins. It is a scrub desert, fairly rocky and poor soils. They dig holes for their nest, some fairly deep, others more of just shallow scrapes under a bush.

The density is pretty impressive, once you start looking around you see penguins everywhere! They are very mellow, and of course here, fairly accustomed to people wandering about. So you can get very close, even get bit if you feel like it. We were lucky to arrive just after eggs had hatched, so we got to see all stages, eggs, small chicks, and some that were a bit larger.

So, after having fun watching the awkward creatures wander, sleep, fight and mate, we left and headed off to Gaiman to meet Welsh descendents and have lots of cakes and sweet things. All of it was very good. Of course, being Argentina, some of the sweets were made with dulce de leche… that stuff is a drug! We had an alfajor (the cookies with dulce de leche between) for desert last night, didn’t need anything more, super rich!

Ok, to end this, we are now waiting for our bus to Rio Gallegos, a good 17 hours on bus, woo hoo! So our Thanksgiving will be spent watching the monotonous scenery of Patagonia go by the panoramic windows of our bus! Cheers!