Penguin rookery
I took my life in my hands today, and was fortunate to have emerged unscathed. From Punta Arenas, you can embark upon a tour to Magdalena Island, a penguin sanctuary and rookery. I almost didn’t go. The vessel was way too rickety for comfort. But the appeal of penguins is just too great to chicken out.
The vessel is an old inter-island ferry. It has a dropfront and does not dock. It simply runs into the shore, drops its front, and cars can drive right on or off. I advise against it. The car deck is built of timbers probably 2x8 and definitely rotting. You then climb steep stair steps into the two decks of a passenger cabin. The ladies’ room needed a serious cleaning and the toilet wouldn’t flush. The windows were not only dirty but coated in salt spray; merely hosing them down wouldn’t do it. Rust everywhere.
The brackets on the seats—the legs if you will—had holes for 4 bolts but only two were used, so in heavy seas the seats would wag back and forth. I know because coming home we had heavy seas. Without vehicles on the car deck, the ferry was off-balance, so really tall wind waves would slide in under the light front end, shove it in the air, and playfully drop the whole vessel. Inside, things creaked and rattled that should never creak nor rattle. I retained my meager lunch by sitting in a seat beside a dirty window assiduously studying the distant clouds.
There were life jackets, of course. It’s the law. They were stowed in a couple of lockers down on the car deck, two and three decks below where all the people ride. They were locked up, of course, to discourage pilfering. I would imagine that the vessel had passed inspection, but that only means that the appropriate bribe had reached the correct person.
Ah, but the birds…. Humboldt and Macaroni Penguins were new to me, as were Kelp Geese and a lot of overwintering sandpipers. Kelp geese are so cool. The females are dark, grey and black, mostly. But the males are brilliant white. Just brilliant. How in the world can they stay so clean in a penguin colony amidst neighbors who give a shit without giving a shit where? You can smell the island coming.
Penguin Under the house is a lovely shelter
The Kelp Gulls are nesting there now, and half of those I saw were juveniles. Cormorants have claimed the steep walls of a bluff facing the water. Overwintering sandpipers ran around aimlessly, gathered in huge flocks. There was no sand beach for them; just stones and cobble. They made do.
A small lighthouse marks the pile of rocks that is Magdalena Island. It is also elaborate weather. According to the captain, the strong sustained winds were gusting at 100 km/hr, 60 mph. I believe it. In part to avoid the wind, the penguins would lie flat on their stomachs or crouch in the indentations that were the entrances to their nesting burrows. The wind came so close to knocking me over that I retired to the ship early.
Imagine the comic relief if a Magellanic Penguin, standing shoulder to shoulder with its colony mates, were to get toppled into the others.
It is delightfully to be imagined.