We are in Buenos Aires and leave tomorrow at 10PM for the long flight home - first to New York and then home. Long night.
I don't think I have posted any food pics on this trip and this is often a staple of my travel posts. The food on the ship was excellent and always in far greater supply than necessary. I have picked out this special event for my only food post. I call it Chocolate Bar because I am a puny guy.
We are nearing the end of our journey and just rounding Cape Horn making our way to Ushuaia where we catch a plane. The map appearing below shows the location where I took some of these photos.
Today was our last opportunity to get onto the water in one of the small boats. We were to take a Zodiac and land on a glacier. It turned out that this was not possible as you will see in the following video, but it was an interesting trip nonetheless. I am more of a photographer than I am a videographer, but the clips should be good enough to give you an idea.
This glacier has a strange feature that is easy to notice. There is a vertical line near the middle. The line is the result of debris captured in the middle as two glaciers merge before heading to the ocean.
Another balloon launch, but for this one I took care to capture the surrounding scenery. The launch this morning was accompanied by the chefs preparing Apple Crumble and Irish Coffee. We are in the Garibaldi Fjord at the base of the Garibaldi Glacier. After tough seas through the night, the morning is calm and bright.
After capturing the video of the balloon launch, I decided to have another Irish Coffee. I thought I made a video of the bartender completing the preparation of my drink (a little coffee, a generous portion of Jamison, and whipped cream), but my phone is automatically set to photo when I activate the camera. Sorry.
Mark makes a rare public appearance.
We can now say we have viewed penguins in the wild in Australia, South Africa, and Chile. The birds were different across locations, but the latitudes would be similar.
Our visit was to the Island of Magdalena to see Magellan Penguins. This desolate island is a seasonal home to about 120,000 Magellan Penguins. These birds use this island from September through March as their breeding location. You can view chicks toward the end of this period. There are no birds and no tourists the rest of the year.
The island does very well attracting the birds and the tourists because a no-fishing zone of 30 kilometers has been declared around the island. The sea provides an abundance of sardines and without the competition from commercial fishing the penguins can find all of the seafood they need close to their nests. In other locations, the birds must venture up to 5 days away from their nests making them more vulnerable to predators and drastically increasing the mortality rate of the chicks as a parent may not make it home with food. This is not a problem on Magdalena.
