Punta Arenas

This is as far south as we will go this trip; roughly the equivalent of Edmonton, Canada in the northern hemisphere. We spent a couple of days touring around Punta Arenas, visiting Museums and the penguin colony at Isla Magdalina. There are several interesting museums in Punta Arenas- the natural history museum had good exhibits on the native people of Magellanes (as the region is known), and the Braun House next to the square demonstrates the opulance of days gone by in Punta Arenas, which was a very important port city until the opening of the Panama Canal. Our favorite, however, was the Maritime museum, which had intersting maritime exhibits with lenghty descriptions in spanish, and adequate descriptions in english. They also had a really interesting movie of the passing of Cape Horn by a 4 masted, square rigged cargo ship in the early 1900's. The video was taken by a sailor from New England, and shows giant waves crashing over the deck during a storm. Makes our bike trip look pretty tame in comparison.

One of the primary reasons we went down to Punta Arenas was to visit the penguin colony at Isla Magdalina. Isla Magdalina is inhabited by about 50,000 Magellanic Penguins during the summer, where they come to nest. They are also known as Jackass Penguins because of the braying sound they make. Although we were only allowed an hour on the island, we got plenty of good pictures and movies:

"Yeah, so what do you want??"

A little ball of fuzz (about 1/3 the size of the adult above)

Penguin Movies:

What's Up?

Walk this way...

Preening




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