Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Part-Way Home from Patagonia

A rock-hopper penguin. For me penguins were the highlight of our visit to Patagonia. 
A king penguin. We saw two solitary individuals of this species, which were at the edge of
their normal range.
We took ourselves out of internet contact for our 8 day voyage on the National Geographic Explorer. Our weather was exceptional, and we visited a number of extraordinary wild places in Patagonia. We saw the fjords of Chile in Tierra del Fuego, and we walked up a long stairway to the lighthouse at Cape Horn. We then spent 3 days at the very wild Staten Island, named by the Dutch (who also named the island in New York). Our penguin sightings -- a very close look at a rock-hopper colony, and the two solo king penguins -- were at beautiful bays and craggy shores on this little-visited island.

Last night the ship traveled for 10 hours to the southernmost city in the world: Ushuaia, Argentina. We have now flown to Buenos Aires -- 3 more hours. We are waiting for another plane to return to Atlanta overnight and then on to Detroit.

Needless to say, I'll be posting much more about this amazing trip!

3 comments:

Tina said...

I hope you do write much more about this trip. I love the photos, it’s been fun seeing your updates. #jealous!

Jeanie said...

It's clear I've missed posts here. Love the bird? A puffin? I have to look back at the post - you probably said!

Mae Travels said...

Hi Jeanie,
The puffin is an arctic bird, but convergent adaptation made it look a lot like penguins, which are the southern bird. They are evidently not related. As you say, the captions identified them.