Puerto Madryn, Argentina, 1/14/16

Welcome to Patagonia! Which means "big feet" by the way. Men with big feet are called patones. And the landscape looks exactly like the view from I-10 between Phoenix and Indio except it's dry clay instead of sand. This region gets 8" of rain per year. It's hot, dry and windy! It was blowing 20 knots or so but today's guide, Flavia, said we were so lucky to have a nice calm day. It's all relative. Flavia is a high school geography teacher who works as a guide during "summer" vacation. She's also of Italian/Spanish decent.

Now as we all know from watching Happy Feet and every documentary ever about penguins, they live on ice, hopping in and out of the frigid sea from said ice. Imagine our surprise after our 2-1/2 hour bus ride to Punto Tombo that these Magellanic penguins live way ashore in this desert. They either dig saucer-shaped indentations out in the open or deeper burrows at the base of the scrub bushes. The path we walked stretches for a mile or so a half mile or so from the water, with penguin nests everywhere. Thousands of them, tens of thousands of them. One parent stays home with the chick while the other waddles down to the sea and spends the day feeding before bringing home the bacon, or in this case, krill. The chicks we saw were about 2/3 the size of the adults who are 18 a 24 inches tall but still covered with a cocoa-colored down. Until they molt and get their mature feathers they are not waterproof and so don't go near or into the water. Once they molt and learn to swim, all parental obligations are complete. No "boomerang" penguins coming back to live with mom and dad. The birds are not afraid of humans so just stand and stare, occasionally stopping the tourists to cross the path. This makes it very nice for picture taking.

I'm guessing the wind speed was above 30 knots at Punto Tombo but Flavia once again said how lucky we were. It was still dry and about 90, but most of us were comfortably in lightweight windbreakers. Oh, and sunscreen. Lots of sunscreen. We're closer to the sun and the ozone hole. Ever so glad I got the SPF 50 at Farmacity in Buenos Aires.

This was our last docking port until we get around the Horn. Now all fingers are crossed that the weather gods are smiling on us so we can safely tender ashore in Port Stanley. The Falklands are notorious for rough seas in which case the ship would do a drive by and head to Antarctica.

Addendum
At sea on the 15th, the ship held a ceremony awarding medals to those who had reached 100, 300, 500 or 1,000 cruising days. They also have a star system based on how much money spent buying the cruises and how much spent on board. Jim and I got our 100 day medallions along with a number of other people. However, there was one couple acknowledged for 1,600+ days at sea. I can't imagine.