26th January 2015 – Australia Day in Ushuaia

Tonight we will have a special dinner where each person has to wear something they’ve bought on the trip and we’ll celebrate the start of our drive north on the Pan American Highway as well as celebrate Australia Day.  So it was in to town this morning to buy an Ushuaian T-shirt each with penguins on it before we go on our walk with the penguins this afternoon.  The Penguin tour started with a 1.5 hour bus drive to a property on 50,000 acres where there’s a museum and cafe and numerous other buildings. There was a beautiful garden of lupins, in fact they grow wild in Chile & Argentina all along the side of the road, they’re very colourful. Also the tress have a windswept look because of the strong winds down in Tierra del Fuego. We then had a 10 minute ride in a zodiac out to Martillo Island which is privately owned and houses about 15,000 Magellanics and about 40 Gentoo penguins and 1 King penguin. The penguins come to the island to mate and breed, so there were nests with about 6 week old baby penguins in them.  They were so lovely & fluffy & a pale grey colour.  As they get older this fur falls out & they turn black & white.  The Gentoo have an orange beak and orange feet and are the 3rd largest of the penguins, behind the Emporer (found in Antarctica) and the King Penguin.  It was fantastic as we were told we could get no closer than 2 meters from the penguins, but in reality we got so close we could touch them.  Michael even had 1 of them nibbling his fingers. They are very inquisitive and copy what you do, so if you look at them with your head to one side they look back with their head to that side, so you can play a game with them and they keep responding copying what you do.  They look so funny when they chase each other around, making loud squawking sounds. We got some great video of them too.    They don’t know why the king penguin is there and he was standing very still all on his own, chest puffed out, head & shoulders above the rest & obviously out of place, but a real thrill to see him.After the walking tour of Martillo Island we went back to the main island of Tierra del Fuego to visit a museum which contained an excellent display of whale, dolphin, seal & sea lion skeletons. Our guide was a student from Buenos Aires who is doing an internship at the research centre on the property, she was most informative.  Had a great lamb ragout for dinner seeing how it is Australia Day, it also went very nicely with the Mendoza Malbec!