Chasing Summer –

February 1-6

Sea Days

Our sea days began last night after leaving Ushuaia and heading up the Beagel Channel. As we made our way, we passed Penguin Island, which had hundreds of penguins on the beach and swimming around the waters.

The flying birds are larger and easier to spot in the water but a close-up look at the pictures reveals that plenty of penguins were in the bird pile as well.

The boat moved very quickly past the island and residents were still coming out looking after we had well passed the island.

The rest of the three days were trivia, dance, and other activities to keep us occupied.

Puerto Deseado

Port Desire has a population of 15,000 people and only two cruise ship visits in a year. This could explain why we were unable to get to the dock because of a broken down ship that hasn’t moved in quite some time.

We can tender, no problem, but wait, there is a problem. The channel is so narrow that we have to anchor 4 nautical miles away, and there is a strong current , so tender takes 1 hour one way. We also couldn’t continue the tender during the lowest tide.

The tender itself was like a penguin tour, albeit a fast one. We scrambled to leave the Odyssey on the last morning tender at 9:15 am. On our way, we noticed the birds bobbing on the water and realized that there were dozens of penguins out here with us.

It made the ride seem quicker, trying to catch glimpses and pictures of them popping up and then disappearing back underwater. As we passed by closer to shore I could see a bunch of white and black blobs on the distant shore that turned out to be a huge penguin colony.

When we arrived at the dock, we climbed out and walked 30 minutes into town. Town was quaint, but not very big.

There are squares that every city, town, and village has, a church, and a few shops and restaurants. The bakeries smelled delicious.

There also was a museum, but it was the equivalent of $18 to enter for foreigners, and there is no way it was worth it.

We admired the coast and the many murals that we came across but went back to the dock to catch the first afternoon tender back to the boat at 2 pm.

We did get back early, so we also walked up to the monument and walked a little further up the coast to a local campground.

The scuttlebutt is that tomorrow we won’t be able to dock again and the tenders won’t run. If that’s the case I will miss out on my penguin tour to see rockhoppers, which makes me incredibly sad. We’ll see what happens.