The Silent Penguin

This guy LOVED the camera. Seriously...

Since I decided to go on the four day long 'W' trek in Torres del Paine, it left me scrambling for time in order to get from Puerto Natales to Punta Arenas to Ushuaia in the last three or so days. I hopped on the early bus to get to Punta Arenas, Chile in the morning so that I could take a penguin tour in the afternoon. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty stoked for it. This is the first time that I would see penguins in the wild, as they were about the only animal that I didn't get to see in the Galapagos. I checked into the hostel, threw my bags down, grabbed some lunch, and hopped on a bus to the Penguinería... The guy at the gate told me I had an hour, so I headed straight to the beach, where hundreds of penguins awaited me, waddling around, feeding their children, and pretty much being the smelly birds that they are. It was great. The big event of the day, however, occurred after I abandoned the Penguinos... As the van was leaving the park, a black truck passed us on the country road at a speed too fast for just about everything. They took a corner wide, at the same speed, and we all proceeded to watch the truck duck into the ditch and flip about five times. Fortunately, the guy and girl in the truck escaped with only a few scrapes and bruises. The guy got out of the truck, helped her out, we pulled up and fortunately a doctor in the van combined with my super sweet first-aid kit meant that they got bandaged up pretty quickly. The truck was totaled and their stuff was scattered everywhere... I'm pretty sure that they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and for some reason it made me think about what the long term implications would be for their relationship... Needless to say, it made me feel pretty good that our van had seatbelts.

I woke up the next morning, and snagged another early bus for the thirteen hour ride to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. Though there are endless things to do here, I couldn't force myself to do any of them. However, I do recommend that if you ever happen to come this far south, you should probably take the train into Tierra del Fuego National Park. I can't really say why, I guess I just like things like that... It probably has to do with some romanticized conception of trains that I got from my mom, but oh well, I guess I will never know.
Anyway, today, its off to Buenos Aires...