In search of the Emperor Penguin & so much more...: Monday, January 03, 2011

25th December 2010 to 1st January 2011

We have been totally blown away in Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia... in more ways than one. The wind was so strong - we "guesstimate" again that the windspeed must have been no less than 50 knots (95-100kms/hr) on many an occasion.

The tour we have just completed was an 8 day Patagonia Photo Safari with Fantastico Sur Expeditions. "Fantastico" is definitely the word without doubt whatsoever. Our guide Claudio Vidal is one of the owners of Fantastico Sur and has co-authored many books about the birdlife of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and Atacama - all the areas we will have travelled by the end of our journey. If you are interested take a look at some of his photography click on this link Claudio Vidal Photo. Claudio is a fluent English speaker and the whole tour was in English, however our driver, Alvaro didn´t speak any English except for a few words, so Coreena was able to practice her Spanish language vocab & pronunciation throughout the trip.

This tour was a dedicated photographic journey (for shutterbugs like us) covering Torres del Paine National Park and the Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego (the island that Ushuaia in Argentina is located). We travelled to so many great locations at superb times to catch the best light. Fortunately the weather, in the most, was great... albeit quite windy at times, but it only lightly rained a couple of times - although the clouds rolled in at a couple of inopportune moments.

Starting the tour in Punta Arenas we travelled to Torres del Paine National Park where we spent 4 nights staying 2 nights each in different hotels. We had long days with 4 very early mornings... each time leaving our hotel by 4.45am to catch sunrise over the peaks of the mountains.

Each day we would explore a different site within the park and we covered quite some area and spending a good amount of time photographing the birds, wildlife, flowers & landscapes - we saw huge numbers of Guanaco, Rhea (a Patagonian Emu), Condors (lots of them) and so many other bird & wildlife species.

After Torres del Paine we visited Milodon Cave in Puerta Natales - where, in 1895, a scientist by the name of Otto Nordenskjold discovered remants of the Milodon (a pre-historic creature). This was also a site home to the primitive Patagonian man of the Paleoindian culture during the era approx. 12,000 to 9,000 years ago.

The next part of the tour was a ferry crossing from Punta Arenas to Porvenir on Tierra del Fuego staying 1 night there before the end of the tour back in Punta Arenas. While on Tierra del Fuego, we visited a very small (new and developing) King Penguin Colony at Useless Bay on the property of Estancia Tres Hermanos - there were only 39 there at the time of our visit; some were likely out feeding in the ocean at the time because Claudio tells us that the highest count is (if we recall correctly) 61. We thought we´d seen the last of King Penguins once we´d finished our Antarctic Expedition so this was a nice treat - they are so wonderful to sit with and observe. We also had a visit to a Magellanic Penguin colony, at Otway Sound, near Punta Arenas.

Our Christmas was spent at Hotel Los Torres, in Torres del Paine National Park; a fairly quiet occasion with dinner in the hotel restaurant.

In Chile, so many restuarants and shops are closed early on NY eve and closed all day on NY day... The locals celebrate the New Year at home with family and friends, have a meal (often an Asado, also known as a BBQ); they may only start cooking at about 10.00pm and eat at about 11.30pm... and may visit other friends throughout the night and into the wee hours of New Year´s Day. Our New Years Eve was a low key affair - being the last day of excursions for our tour, we had a delicous dinner at Hotel Rey Don Felipe with our tour guide Claudio, driver Alvaro and the other 3 participants of our tour. We´d already made it through all of the Australian midnights - back to our hotel by 9.00pm to catch up on some photo reviewing and blog posting while we had Wi-Fi access.

Anyway, while on the tour, we each took 100`s of photos and thanks to a couple of long bus rides we´ve managed to review some our favourites of this part of our trip... here´s a small collection... (wish we had that kind of time to get back to our Antarctica photos!)... Enjoy...

Birds of Patagonia