Hangin with Happy Feet in Patagonia

After debating how far south we were going to go in South America, we'd ruled out Ushuaia in Argentina as we'd been told by a few travellers not to bother as it was expensive and not worth the long bus ride. Besides, most people only bother going there to say they've been to the southern most town in the world. What those poor ignorant people don't realise, however, is that there's a place in Chile called Puerto Williams that's further south than Ushuaia. So they can only say they almost went to the southern most point in the world. Idiots. We decided we'd go as far as Punta Arenas, Chile, before making the massive trek back up to Buenos Aires.

There's not really much to do in Punta Arenas except for visiting the penguin colonies or doing some duty free shopping in a ridiculously massive shopping zone. Like good tourists, we opted for the penguin colony. There are a couple to choose from, but we wanted to go to the main one, Monumento Natural Los Pinguinos, which is on Magdalena Island in the Strait of Magellan. Because of bad weather we had to wait 2 days to book our ferry trip out to the island, but it was well worth the wait. The ferry left at 5pm and we had brilliant sunshine for the first time in the 3 days we'd been there.  It took about 2.5 hours on the ferry, and just as we were approaching the island you could see little flashes of black and white swimming around in the water. We had an hour to walk around the island, getting up close and personal with the cute little buggers. The walkway is roped off, but the penguins often walk across the path in front of you, so you can get a real good look at them. There are about 60,000 breeding pairs of the Magellanic penguin on the island, and we even spotted some little chicks hiding out in their nests with protective mums and dads. There are only so many photos you can take of penguins though, so an hour was enough to get some good shots. 

Having checked out the penguins and drunk some Chilean red wine (only top shelf of course - 1.5 litres for about $4), we were ready to leave Punta Arenas for the epic bus ride up to Buenos Aires.