11/28: Patagonia's Magellan Penguins & Ashore at Punta Arenas

 After a last night navigating the Magdalena Channel, the ship entered the Strait of Magellan and dropped anchor at Magdalena Island, located halfway between Tierra del Fuego and the Chilean continental territory. The island became a national park in 1966 and was named part of the Penguin National Monument in 1982. 

We were up at the crack of dawn to make our last shore excursion to the island park. 

The island was full of Magellanic Penguins that we'd learned were  distinguished by two black rings on the chest. They grow to between 50 – 70 cms tall, weigh from 3.5 to 5.5 kgs and live up to 25 years old. Their main habitat is the ocean where they eat hake and other fish. 

The trail along the coastal path from the pier to the lighthouse was a short 850 meters. 

Never had we seen so many kelp gulls as we did on Magdalena Island! Not only was our visit to the island a fantastic opportunity to see a type of penguins we hadn't seen before on either the cruise to Antarctica or this one through part of Patagonia, but it was also a birders' paradise. In addition to kelp gulls, other birds included cormorants, dolphin gulls, upland and kelp geese.

We’d fully expected to see masses of penguins but the numbers of birds surprised us. 

The islands in the Magellan Strait were used as references for navigation by explorers, sailors, adventurers and pirates who sailed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Sailors landed here on Magdalena and nearby Marta islands to supply their ships with fresh meat. 

For the first time, I learned that penguins walk in a waddling motion because they have no knees for extra balance.

This was the first time we'd spotted penguins nesting or resting in what I would call burrows. In Antarctica, the Chinstrap and Gentoo penguins we'd seen had all been on rocky terrain.

I went a little 'nuts' taking so many photos of the penguins as I thought this may well have been the last time we'd ever come across penguins in the wild!

Near the top of the path by the lighthouse was a lone skua, a predator for all the eggs and small birds on the island. 

One of the most important events in these islands occurred at the beginning of the last century when the first lighthouses were built to help navigation. Later, groups of fishermen used the islands to wait for better weather and to catch penguins to use as bait to catch crab.

A ranger at the lighthouse told us that there were ten thousand penguins on Magdalena Island compared to forty thousand ten years ago but didn't explain what caused the precipitous drop.  

We had to wait a while to board the zodiacs as the penguins were in the way - believe me, I didn't mind one iota!

Our last view of the island from our cabin's porthole window:

After a brief trip across the Strait of Magellan, the ship arrived at our final destination of Punta Arenas. What unforgettable days we had had enjoyed navigating across the channels at the end of the world while exploring Patagonia's biodiversity. Our trips ashore to see the sub-Antarctic forests and the magnificent Darwin Range glaciers left us with an indelible memory from this remote corner of Earth where nature was still absolutely pristine and wild.

Austrians Marion and Stefan were our delightful companions at every meal and also on some of the excursions ashore. We hated to say adieu with them but hoped our paths would cross again before too long.

Punta Arenas was founded more than 150 years ago as Chile’s first settlement in Patagonia. The city was a boom town by the end of the 19th century due to developments in mining, cattle keeping and wood production. 

We couldn’t remember ever seeing so much graffiti everywhere before and so many storefronts boarded up. We wondered if there had been riots here in Punta Arenas as there had been for several months in the country’s capital of Santiago located 1,960 miles away because of the huge economic rift between social classes.

Having just returned from Antarctica, we had more than a passing interest in the city's Naval and Maritime Museum because its emphasis was on Chile’s high-seas prowess and particularly the southernmost continent. Unfortunately, the museum was closed which meant we couldn’t see the acclaimed movie Around Cape Horn whose black and white footage showed the hardships faced by early 20th century daredevil crew members facing mountainous seas in the frigid southern waters.

The central square, known as Plaza de Armas and also Munoz Gamero, was surrounded by evidence of the city’s early prosperity when Punta Arenas was one of Chile’s wealthiest cities.

In the center of the plaza, a grandiose bronze statue at the top of the monument honored the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan. I read that a kiss on the shiny toe of one of the statues at the foot of the monument would one day bring us back to Punta Arenas!

Bordering the plaza were a dozen small artisan kiosks that sold lots of adorable penguin and other souvenirs that were certainly far more reasonably priced than those available on the ship. Many of the kiosks had a variety of hand-knitted items, especially cold weather headbands and hats. I would have liked to buy one but they had all been knitted with mammoth needles so they had a very open weave and therefore wouldn’t keep anyone’s head warm!

These hats caught my attention and were something I thought our son, Zachary, would also like. I texted him a photo of them and asked if he wanted one but didn't hear back so left without buying one. Of course, when we were about an hour away, I did hear back he wanted one, so we got lots more exercise than we planned as Steven and I walked back to the kiosk and picked it up. Thank goodness the kiosk was still open as we'd gotten up very early for the shore excursion to see the penguins.

This 1895 mansion was Palacio Sara Braun, a national landmark and architectural showpiece of southern Patagonia that was designed by a French architect. Craftsmen and materials were imported from Europe during the four years of the home’s construction. The home was now owned by the Club de la Union, a social organization. We could see damage to the building’s windows and wondered if the civil unrest had caused the closure of the building for tours.

We sure did appreciate the city’s wide sidewalks especially compared to those in the southern Argentinian city of Ushuaia where we'd ended the cruise to Antarctica and began the one to Patagonia a day later as those were uneven and in lousy condition. These streets were unusually wide as they were planned to accommodate flocks of sheep!

I know the preceding photos don't give a fair representation of the damage we saw in downtown Punta Arenas due to the recent riots to virtually all the stores, banks and public buildings. It was, quite frankly, pretty depressing and sad walking  around Punta Arenas seeing all the boarded up windows. We couldn't help thinking how bad it would likely be in Santiago where we'd be in about a week as the capital was the city that had received all the bad international press concerning the rioting.

Amid the ugliness were these beautiful lilacs.

From the city center, we walked uphill to Mirador Cerro la Cruz to see the white cross for its great vantage point nearby above the city. 

Across the street from the cross was the mirador or lookout where we noticed colorful corrugated roofs atop the homes. I overheard a guide say that the ground wasn’t stable for high rises to be built in Punta Arenas, thus the reason for the many one-story buildings. We could look across to the Straight of Magellan from the lookout.

I sure had never seen Quebec marked on any list of cities around the world before nor such cute handmade signs like these colorful ones!

There were several people selling local crafts from the lookout as so many tourist buses came to this spot. We didn’t see anyone buying anything, though. 

What a hoot seeing this store called Winnipeg, the capital city of Manitoba in my native Canada!

The graffiti stated the police were traitors, I'm guessing, because some of the local people didn't feel the police supported them in their issues with the national government.

We were surprised that the Museo Salesiano was open as no other museum had been that day. The museum was operated by an order of Italian missionaries who arrived in Punta Arenas in the 19th century. I read that most of the Salesians spoke no Spanish but they proved to be daring explorers and traveled throughout the region, collecting artifacts that had been made by indigenous people.

Salesian priest Maggiorino Borgatello was responsible for the idea of the Salesian Regional Museum in 1893, beginning with the important collection of ethnographic material gathered by the Salesian missionaries as well as minerals, fossils and plants.

Part of a blue whale skull:

There was a fairly interesting exhibit on the story of Milodon, the name given to the remains of an extinct animal found in a cave 278 kms away near Puerto Natales, a town we'd be passing through the next day en route to a five-night stay in Torres del Paine National Park further north in Patagonia. Carbon dioxide analysis estimated that the cave was inhabited until the end of the last glacial phenomenon when climactic changes, competition between species and human predators likely caused the fauna's extinction. Stalactites were also found in the cave. The unique paleontological finding caused a sensation in the international scientific community and also among the common people at the time.

We looked forward to exploring the cave after seeing this exhibit.

Steven and I were surprised to spot figures made from volcanic stone on Rapa Nui or Easter Island, one of our favorite destinations that we'd been fortunate enough to travel to two years previously while on an extended trip to South America. We quickly realized though, of course, how relatively close we were to that speck of land so the figures didn't seem all that out of place!

The real penguins we'd seen that morning and the last two weeks had been of far greater interest than these stuffed ones even if we only saw a few varieties of them!

It was rather sad seeing the photos of the Yamana indigenous people that had been relocated to the missions by the well-meaning missionaries. How sad they elected to relocate many of the indigenous people to nearby Dawson Island where they died by the hundreds from diseases like the flu and pneumonia.

We had learned since arriving in southern Argentina two weeks ago so much about the nomadic people and their eventual elimination. You likely recall how I wrote in previous posts how their contact with the missionaries and others were factors in the loss of the Yamana people.

The seat cover was embroidered by a young woman from the Selknam indigenous group who lived near Tierra del Fuego, further south in Patagonia.

This was the last representative of the tribe who died in April of 1983.

The crucifix came from the first chapel in Punta Arenas.

Pope John Paul II visited Punta Arenas in 1987.

Since most everything else was closed that day, we figured the Municipal Cemetery would be open! We had been in several pretty fantastic cemeteries on our earlier trip to South America two years ago and it looked like the one in Punta Arenas would be no exception. 

We were struck right away by the sculpted cypress trees everywhere we looked. 

Someone must mot have liked these people, we figured, judging by the destruction of the windows and facades!

As was so typical of cemeteries we've visited throughout South America, ornate mausoleums honored the original families who built Punta Arenas.

After hearing while on the second cruise about the number of Croatians that moved to Patagonia, we weren’t surprised to see so many gravestones that had ethnic names.

I couldn't help but smile when I saw these 'hairy' cypresses!

We were caught off guard, though, by the few Jewish graves we saw as we hadn’t expected any. I loved the inscription on this man's grave as that would be how I also would love to be remembered: 

"May his soul rest in peace. To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

The stones on the Jewish gravestone was an acknowledgement that people had visited and also the way the living help the dead to “stay put.” 

Kathy: This Re/Max sign was the first of what turned out to be hundreds we saw in Chile and especially in Paraguay!

After witnessing so much natural beauty in Antarctica and Patagonia on the two cruises, seeing the wanton destruction throughout Punta Arenas was depressing.

We ‘celebrated’ Thanksgiving by calling our children and getting a bite to eat in a small cafe that evening. Having just dined on three-course meals on both the Antarctica and Patagonia cruises, the last thing we wanted right then was another big meal! The highlight for me was a single scoop of some heavenly chocolate ice cream, quite likely the best I’ve ever had!

Next post: Heading toward Torres del Paine National Park, the beginning of another adventure!

Posted on January 10th, 2019, on another snow-less day in suburban Denver.