Marching with Penguins at the End of the World

The night at the airport wasn't very comfortable and the floor was cold, but we were too excited to care much since we were headed to the end of the world.  We arrived in Ushuaia and out of the airplane window saw the beautiful snow capped mountains.  The airport was a neat small building built like any other ski cabin, lots of wood and a steep pitched roof.  After settling in our hostel we quickly figured out our options for the day, we really wanted a tour of penguins and luckily there was one leaving in the afternoon.  So we booked the tour and then went out to find some lunch at an Irish pub. Jon had a burger and Ching Jen had a toast sandwich.  Little did she know that it would really be more like ordering four regular sized sandwiches because the slices of bread were about 8" by 8 ".  The town was small, only several blocks long, and filled with souvenir shops, and they weren't open that early on a Sunday so we just window shopped.  We headed to the pier to check in for our tour and look out at all the shipping vessels that are probably making their way around the tip of South America.

For our tour, we had to take an hour and a half van ride out to a ranch, where they have a restaurant, but also a research center on penguins. We then took a bumpy ride on a zodiac out to Isla Martillo where the penguins have arrived to build their nests, lay their eggs and nurture their young.  We stepped on to the island and the penguins immediately came towards us.  They were adorable and too cute.  They waddled, sticking out their chests and wings stuck out behind them, their head angled up in the air, and waddled/ran towards and past us.  One came as close as three feet of us and we went crazy with the photos.  There are two kinds of penguins on this island, one is just black and white, or the Magellanic penguin, and the other has an orange beak and feet, or the Gentoo penguins (they probably had a different name for them in Ushuaia).  We took a walk around the island checking out their nesting areas.  We learned that the Gentoo males, build a new nest each year out of pebbles, while the Magellanic males make one nest and maintain the same one each year by making a burrow under ground.  The males wait for their female partner for life and they lay the egg, and wait about 45 days for the egg to hatch. Baby penguins stay with their parents for two months when they are then ready to be on their own.  Male penguins must wait five years before they are of mating age and then they will build a nest and wait for a female to approach him and be his mate.  We had a blast and could not get enough of the penguins and their waddling.  We got back on the zodiac and the van and made a quick stop at a famous tree that is a hundred years old and has twisted branches.  We was late when we got back, though the sunlight was still out, so we found dinner where Ching Jen had ravioli and Jon had beef milanese with cheese and tomato.  

The next day we went to the Tierra del Fuego National Park. We caught a van to the park where it dropped us off at the beginning of a trail.  It was a 3-hour trail along the coast, into the woodlands, and past several open fields and beaches.  We had beautiful views of the snow capped mountains and the bay.  It reminded us very much of our trip to Maine and our hike in Wolf's Neck Woods State Park. When we finished the trail, we took a break at the visitor center, where we had our ham and cheese sandwich with wild rabbits at our feet.  We waited for the van to pick up up here and it took us back into town.  We learned that it was a long weekend here in Ushuaia, with a federal holiday on Monday and a city holiday on Tuesday.  The shops therefore, were only open for a few hours in the afternoon.  We were just in time for the opening of many stores so we did a bit of shopping before heading back to the hostel.  We spent the rest of the afternoon on the top floor of the hostel (the common room) with panoramic view of the bay.  We sipped hot coffee and played Battleship and cards until the sun set at around 7:30pm.  We went to a pub that was popular with the locals and Ching Jen had a steak with fries and Jon had 103 mussels.  We did some packing when we got back to the hostel and we learned that there was a firework show at 11pm.  We rushed upstairs to the common room and got front row seats to a great firework show in the bay.  It was a special treat knowing that this was a pretty intimate firework show for the small town at the end of the world.  

The next morning we walked around the neighborhood looking for a lake but never found it and had a quick lunch of Ching Jen's leftover steak (made into sandwiches) before heading to the airport.  Ahead of us we have a long journey to Quito, Ecuador--24 hours of travel and four flights!