2014/01 Chile trip - Seno Otway |
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Friday January 24th
Breakfast was included at the Ilaia, but there was no bacon being fried. It began with a mixture of chopped fruit, yoghurt, muesli, and jam, followed by chapattis filled with soft cheese and guacamole. I thought it was OK, but there were a lot of ingredients that Sandie isn’t keen on.
If anything, the day was even windier, and we tacked our way along the beach, OK until the sand dried and we were sandblasted. The sea wall is very practical but the city has incorporated art and history in the design. There are no deck chairs for obvious reasons but the concrete loungers are angled out 
of the wind. We came to a heavy duty playground that included basketball hoops at the water’s edge, a bit optimistic we thought.
The sky was a dizzying tapestry of black and white clouds zooming across a deep blue background. We’d seen skies like this in Tasmania; must be a southern hemisphere thing. Despite this scary picture, Punta Arenas was not obliterated by an incoming comet.
We saw elaborate shrines like this as the roadside. Like the simpler crosses in Montana, they signify a fatal traffic accident.
We lunched back in town at a very pleasant café, the Tapiz, on a massive array of pitas.
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Seno Otway |
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Our penguin bus collected us from the Ilaia; all the other passengers were young Chileans so there was little conversation we understood. We passed the airport and then drove an hour down a dirt road, paying $3 to enter the park and about $12 at the entrance to the penguin beaches. These are on the Seno Otway, which translates as Otway Sound and may have a naming link to Australia’s Cape Otway. 
“Una hora” said the driver, a disappointment as we’d been promised two hours, but the other passengers seemed to accept it. Worse, the beaches were a 20 minute walk away so we’d only have 20 with the penguins. Sandie tripped 
in the rush and hurt her ribs, but she managed to avoid injuring any penguins.
It was worth the effort though. The penguins were easy to see, especially as it was high tide. The beach is fenced with a large hide. There was a big waddle of penguins at the shoreline, with a crèche of almost-grown young lounging on the beach or swimming around in the shallows. Other adults were walking past us continuously just a few feet away, on their way along well-worn paths to feed less mature young in their burrows. They were jumping up the steep bits as they can’t step up. They’d stop often for some mutual preening, completely ignoring us.
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Seno Otway penguins (12.29) |
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These were Magellanic penguins (that name again!), medium sized as penguins go, and very black and white compared to Hollywood penguins. They come ashore in September and claim their burrows or dig new ones. The eggs hatch around Christmas and the chicks fledge and leave in March. The adults molt then and sometime in April the colony is deserted.
The rain rolled in just as we were leaving, so having another hour might not have been all that good. Back in town though, it was dry and sunny. We walked down to the recommended La Marmite for dinner. It was very busy and we were lucky we'd come early as the tables were all reserved beyond 10 pm; the Puntas eat late. There we were introduced to the decadent pisco sour slushies. Great food too.