On-the-Road Tales

My houselady was trying in tell me something, what I thought she said was a time change to put the clock an hour back. I thought, that can not be right because I just changed the clocks in Brasil 2 weeks ago. So I asked someone to translate – yep that was right. Every country changes the hour at a different time. Now, this makes sense because they are all at different positions so the light is different I was just thinking the seasons are the seasons everywhere. Yikes – as if I do not have enough trouble with the time changes in the states 2wice a year, now I have to deal with them monthly…

Off to the port where i picked up a zodiac. We donned life jackets and zoomed off into the water where about 30 minutes later we got to Isla Magdalena where the Penguin colony lives. This island has been noted on the nautical charts for centuries since it was one of the few sources of meat and eggs for seafaring vessels and antartic expeditions. The island is covered with the black and white birds, 150,000 of them to be exact. 1 for every person living in the port town. They are a bit clumsy and it is kinda funny to watch them slip and slide over rocks trying to get out of the water. The adults are molting their feathers right now in summer and will swim off to Argentina for winter but return to lay their eggs in spring.

Since the Magellan straits were such an important waterway, joining the atlantic and pacific, the chilean govt built a serious of lighthouses to assist navigation of the channel. One of the light houses, now part of the park, is on the island. I climbed to the top after negociating the 3 narrow staircases with my backpack. Next time, that stays at the bottom.

We cruised over to Isla Marta to check out the sea lions. These are incredibly adorable little guys. They had pups which were brown and black and fought and wrestled with each other. When they got board they would go over and nudge or climb on their parents sunning on the beach or in cliffs and get roared at. Some of the papas were way big, I would not want to come face to face with some of them in a dingy! On the way back we were followed by lovely black and white dolphins, frolicking and jumping beside the boat. Being a seaman in this place was certainly harsh work, The wind was bitter, and the seaspray was freezing and waves often rough and unpredictable.

I grabbed some fruit and retreated to my room to relax for the rest of the afternoon and ponder my many days adventures!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 9:32 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.