Penguins and Tuxedos

For many reasons, and I will not recount them here, 2018 was not a particularly good year for either John or me. Although there were some bright moments like Rebecca and Kris’s wedding or my week at the Library of Congress this summer, for the most part it has been 12 months I would just as soon forget. So I am glad it ended on a happy note … or a “happy feet” note. 

We arrived fairly early this morning in the Falkland Islands. I had booked an independent tour here to go to Volunteer Point, the best spot in the Falklands to see penguins. Our tour operator, a man named Patrick Watts, had been requested to see if we could get on the first or second tender boat. So, after working out in the gym and taking a shower, I had a quick breakfast and was in the lounge 15 minute before ticket distribution to make sure I received a place in the coveted first boat. I was a little aggressive about putting myself towards the head of the line, but I did walk away with two tickets for the first boat. 

We were parked further away from shore than we had before, and the sea was a little rough getting us to the pier. Once there, we had no trouble finding Patrick Watts Tours. It was a bigger operation than I thought it was, and Mr. Watts had about 60 people going and 15 drivers to take them to Volunteer Point. While we waited for everybody to arrive, John and I had time to look a little bit around Stanley, the main settlement in the Falklands. It is unmistakably British. Other than the green iron roofs, these row houses could be just about anywhere in Old Blighty. 

There were even things like red phone boxes that are nearly impossible to find in England anymore. 

The way that tours work in the Falklands is that the three licensed tour operators hire local people to drive tourists in their own four-wheel drive cars. This spreads work out among islanders, and it gives tourists a better chance to interact with local people. I think it’s a terrific idea. Our driver was David and he showed his Falklands pride by putting the flag on his old Land Rover.

There were five of us crammed into that little vehicle, David, John and I, and a couple from Hanover, Germany. The Germans seemed like very nice people but spoke minimal English. We had driven to the town limits of Stanley in a couple minutes, and we were going on a two-lane paved road toward our destination. David warned us that the pavement would not last for long, and about ten minutes later we were bumping up and down on a dirt and gravel road. With a convoy of similar vehicles ahead of us, we could trace their progress in the clouds of dust. About another 30 minutes brought us to the entrance to a farm. Volunteer Point lies on the far edge of this ranch. 

We stopped here for a bathroom break. There was an “honesty bank” where you could buy baked good and a can where you put in money of whatever denomination you chose as payment. The Falklands, by the way, have their own currency, the Falklands pound, but it is tied to the value of Sterling at one-to-one. In a few minutes, we were off again, this time crossing fields with no roads headed towards the point. Patrick makes a point of having the drivers travel in convoys because it is easy to get lost and so that the drivers can help one another if an axle breaks or a tire blows. 

The Falkland Islands are pretty bleak. There is obviously not much rain here, and the very rocky soil does not hold the water when the rain does fall. It looks a lot like the sagebrush landscapes of the American West. There was not a tree in sight. We traveled, in a seemingly random direction, for about another ninety minutes before we caught sight of Volunteer Point. And when we saw the birds, the whole trip was completely worth it. 

There are three different types of penguins here. The most prominent are the King penguins, close relatives of Antartica’s Emperor penguins. And they love to pose!

They are very social birds.

Watching these birds and photographing them is absolutely addictive. I was fascinated as a group of them went down to the sea. Volunteer Point is an absolutely gorgeous white sand beach, and it sort of looks like Bora Bora, only with 40 degree water. Even then penguins seemed to pause before diving in. 

The reserve is admirably set up with a system of “wardens” who make sure that visitors do not get too close to penguin breeding areas. These trained local people are well-informed about the birds and happy to share their information. They told us a good bit about the juvenile penguins. The young birds are pretty easy to spot by their distinctive brown feathers.

After they molt for the first time, they will then have the distinctive white and black coloration.

John was as fascinated by these creatures as I was. 

But the King Penguins, as fascinating as they are, were only one of three species at Volunteer Point. The Gentoo Penguins were another group. These are a little smaller and somewhat shyer than the Kings. They were very focused on raising their young. Both females and males share this duty.

The way the preserve was set up, the Gentoos had access to the sea by a separate cove and people were not allowed to enter that corridor. These penguins tolerated humans from a distance, but unlike the gregarious Kings, did not actually seem to seek out contact. 

The final group here were the Magellanic Penguins. These were the penguins I had seen on my last visit to Chile. They are probably the most common species here in South America. 

The distinctive feature of the Magellanic Penguins is the way they dig nests. Unlike the Kings and Gentoos who give birth and raise their young in crowded colonies, each pair of these birds finds digs a nest a few feet from the next nesting pair. 

The Magellanic Penguins tolerate humans well unless people come too close to their nests. If that happens, the birds will abandon their nesting area and seek another safer spot. This is what apparently happened at Seno Otway, the cove near Punta Arenas where I had first seen the bird about ten years ago. For this reason, most of the Magellanic nesting area was fenced off at Volunteer Point and we could not go there. Fortunately, a few were close enough to the fence and the optical zoom on my camera was good enough. 

After about ninety minutes on the beach, it was time to go back. I went in another car on our return. My driver, Shaun, was a little less gregarious than David and my fellow passengers, an IT guy from Austin and his daughter, were not much all that more chatty than the German couple had been. So I somehow managed to nap for some of the two hours back. 

We had about a half hour to explore Stanley. We went into a local shop which seemed like a mashup of Tesco and Waitrose. I found these in the pharmacy aisle.

We also passed by one of Stanley’s most iconic buildings, Christ Church Cathedral.

During the nineteenth century, the Falklands was the center of Anglican missionary efforts in South America. Now, although it is called a cathedral, is really does not deserve the appellation as it has no resident bishop. The arch in front was created out of the jaws of two whales that beached themselves some years ago. 

We were supposed to catch the last tender at 4:30 in the afternoon, but when we arrived they were obviously far behind schedule and the lines were long. John hates standing in lines and with his injured foot and low blood pressure, he probably should not stand in them anyhow. So we wandered about a bit while we waited for more people to be taken to the ship. 

So today was New Year’s Eve, always one of my least favorite holidays of the year. John and I went to the evening show, and we asked somebody to snap a pictures of us as the sun set.

We had dinner at one of the specialty restaurants on board. These charge extra for your meal, but the food in generally significantly better. After that, John wanted to go to see the countdown. They handed out all kinds of silly hats and whistles and the like. John ended up with two after I declined to wear mine.

At the stroke of midnight — well, actually ten seconds too early according to my infallible Apple Watch — people screamed “Happy New Year” in several different languages and the balloons came tumbling down.

Around the Horn

We had one of those “bucket list” experiences this morning as we went around Cape Horn. This stretch of water, where the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern oceans with their different currents meet, is considered one of the wildest and most treacherous stretches of sea in the world. It was the graveyard of many ships in an earlier time, particularly if they had to come through here in the dangerous winter months of June, July, and August. 

All that seemed quite overblown to me as we began to approach it on calm seas. Yet the moment we caught sight of the the Horn itself, Isla Hornos, it seemed to drop 20 degrees and the wind began to blow so hard it was difficult to move.

In time, we came close enough to see the monument constructed there to those lost at sea.

Just to prove I was there, I asked some stranger on deck to snap a picture of me. Those of you who know how shy I am know that took a lot of courage. 

We did a tour around this island, and this time, for a change, the best views were from starboard, not port. Our cabin in on the starboard side, and John snapped this picture of the backside of Horn Island from our balcony.

At lunch, Adriano, the flamboyant cruise director, and his crew did some weird ceremony where people were “baptized” with the water from Cape Horn. Neither John or I decided to line up.

The rest of the day was pretty peaceful as we sailed east, I did a lot of work on photographs and some writing. The evening show was a tribute to Bert Bacharach. It was mediocre, but compared to the shows we’ve seen here it was like seeing this year’s Tony winner. 

Tomorrow we land on the Falkland Islands and we see penguins! I am so excited.

Ushuaia

Our day began sailing down the magnificent Beagle Channel. This narrow passage lies south of Tierra del Fuego and north of the islands that surround Cape Horn. It was named for the ship that first mapped it, the HMS Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin on its second voyage. The Beagle Channel is probably the most beautiful waterway in the world. On both side of the dark blue water you are surrounded by tall black granite mountains sheathed in ice and snow.

It was unforgivingly cold standing on the bow watching the procession of glaciers, but it was so beautiful I could barely move.

About an hour after seeing our last glacier, we caught sight of the Argentine city of Ushuaia. This name is not an easy one for Americans to pronounce, but it sort of sounds like “ooh SWHY uh.” There is definitely not a “sh” sound in it, and to say “yoo shwhy uh” makes South American eyes roll. Argentines are very insistent that Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world. They admit the Puerto Williams, in Chile, is somewhat further south, but dismiss it as a mere “town” lacking a cathedral and the other necessities for being a proper city. 

From the boat we could see a relatively compact settlement with a fair number of tall buildings in its center and a dramatic backdrop of mountains, some still capped with snow, behind it.  

From my window I could see an old municipal museum. But what caught my eye was the slogan painted on the wall in front of it proclaiming Ushuaia to be the capital of “Las Malvinas,” the Argentine word for the the Falkland Islands. The bitterness over Argentina’s defeat in the 1982 war has never subsided. 

John and I separated today. Well, not permanently, but just for the afternoon. I wanted to do a more adventurous activity for the day with hiking and canoeing in the National Park. John wisely figured that his foot was not up to any kind of hike, so he signed up for a boat and bus tour of the park. So, gentle readers, you get to hear about two different afternoons.

My tour was called a little before John’s and after I disembarked I was directed to a small van. There were 10 of us there, plus the guide and the driver. Our guide introduced herself as “Marin” and explained that while she considered Ushuaia her home now, she was originally from France. I noticed she was pregnant. We all went around and introduced ourselves. There were five people of the bus from México, and five from the United States. The Mexicans were all in their thirties and they seemed quite well-educated and were very well-dressed and groomed. All three women were quite attractive, and one of the men was movie star handsome. The Americans, whom I came to know a little better, were a mixed bunch. Besides me there was Chris, a middle-aged guy from Atlanta, and a family from Chicago, Debra, her daughter Alicia, who apparently just graduated from college, and her son Chris who appeared to be in college right now. I liked all of them. 

We drove from the town into the National Park until we came to a small lake.

It had become increasingly cloudy during the morning, and right at the point we were changing into our canoeing clothing, it started to rain. I began to think I had made a dreadful mistake. I idly snapped pictures of some birds to keep myself from sinking too deeply into regret. 

In time we were all set up and ready to go. As there were ten of us, plus our guide, we split into two boats. Marin was the captain of what she called “Team USA” and the handsome Santiago was captain of “Team México.” By this time it was raining hard, but I decided to just make the best of it. 

I turned out that the Americans worked together pretty well as a group. The two Chrises are in the front of the boat, Alicia is in front of me, and Debby is next to her. 

Some of the Mexican girls were so attractive that they could not resist putting the oars down and taking selfies no matter how much Santiago chided them. 

We paddled for about 90 minutes, on and off. The route, we basically figured out, took us from the glacier-fed lake where we had started into the Beagle Channel. As we came towards the end of our route, we had a special visitor.

While I had my phone out, I also snapped this atmospheric picture. I may use it as an inspiration for an exercise on monochromatic color with my class. 

By the time our leisurely trip down the river had ended so had the rain. The boats disembarked on the shore

and we all started to put our stuff away. Marin, in the blue, was helping Team México to to empty some of the water out of their boat. 

Before I took everything off, I had Chris from Atlanta snap a picture of me. 

Once all our boots and pants and life jackets were off, Marin put us in the van and we went off to a less congested spot on along the channel. 

We had a fairly small hike down a well-marked trail through the woods. I would have preferred something longer and more vigorous, but I guess the time was rather limited. 

We saw a couple interesting things along the way. One was this brave soul who appeared to be planning a swim in the waters of the Beagle Channel. Although it is summer here, I doubt that the water ever gets much warmer than 40.

Marin also stopped to pound out what she called the “Winter Bark” tree. Apparently there is a good deal of vitamin C in the bark of this tree and it was chewed to help prevent scurvy among sailors and settlers. I think I’ll stick with orange juice myself.

We had a little lunch after our hike and then we were on the bus, back to town. I asked to be dropped off in the town itself to look around a bit. There was not all that much of interest to see, frankly. There were lots of souvenir shops and restaurants including several American chains such as this familiar brand.

 John later described Ushuaia to me as looking like a “rough part of Switzerland.” That seems pretty accurate.

Around six o’clock I went back towards the boat to meet him. But more on that later.

Meanwhile, John, after some problems, finally met up with his group. This tour was more of a classic cruise ship excursion with lots of people piled into big buses. I am sure he would rather have done something more like what I did, but he has to be careful with that broken foot. 

After a bus ride, they were all placed on a “catamaran,” which seems to be what people in this part of the world call anything smaller than an aircraft carrier.

They went out into the Beagle Channel where they saw sea lions

and lots of bird life, particularly around this iconic lighthouse.

My tour ended before John’s did, so we had vaguely made plans to meet in town and perhaps even have dinner. Unfortunately, as he does not really have a working phone, we could not call each other and say, “Hey, I’m here by the entry to the pier.” So I waited around for about 40 minutes walking back and forth between the street and the pier, but we never able to meet up with him. Meanwhile, John, feeling the same frustration, just went into town. He snapped some more picture of the city including the cathedral.

The interior apparently was even less inspiring. While this looked like a ski resort, it was apparently some kind of municipal building. 

Meanwhile, back on the pier, I saw my friend with the teddy bear.

I finally gave up and went back to the boat. The ship was scheduled to leave at 7:30, and when John had not yet appeared in the cabin by that time, I went down to guest services to see if he had check onboard yet. They assured me he had. I felt much better!

In the evening, we watched as Ushuaia disappeared from the stern.

About a couple hours later we briefly pulled into the waters of Puerto Williams. I have to agree with the Argentines here:  it’s not much of a settlement.

Tomorrow, we go by Cape Horn itself!