Patagonia Chapter 2 - Los Penguinos!

[Magellanic Penguins!]

At 4 pm on our official first day in Punta Arenas, we went on a tour of the penguin colony at Seno Otway, which is about 75 km outside of Punta Arenas. Eduardo had basically organized it for us, telling us how much it cost and calling the company to come pick us up directly from the hostel. I believe it was 7.000 pesos (14 USD) for the transportation and the 4.000 (8 USD) pesos for entrance to the area.


[baby penguinos]

Basically, we got to walk around an area where the penguins go from their burrows to the ocean. From late November to early December, the penguins eggs are hatching, so we also got to see lots of babies hanging around.


[Penguinos getting really close!]

There were also times when the penguins were ridiculously close to us and the walkway that we were permitted on. It was so cute to see the little guys waddling around paying no mind to all the attention they were getting from the visitors.


[Alli, me and Maribeth at the beach overlook]

We had been advised by some friends that this penguin colony wasn't a fantastic exciting experience, but despite this, we went anyway because we wanted to see some penguins up close. We were very pleasantly surprised by the experience. It wasn't too cold, we got to see the penguins doing there thing and there were a good number of them, and not a lot of tourists. There weren't tons and tons of penguins like there are supposed to be at the Isla Magdalena colony, but there was still a good number and we were glad to see penguins!


[the four of us at Seno Otway]