Our Trip to the End of the World, Day Two

     Jay went to breakfast, I chose to sleep. He came back, we slept more. I woke up, ate three ginger cookies I had baked, then finshed all the yarn I had brought on the baby afghan I am making. The van picked us up at 11:30 and drove for an hour and a half, mostly on dirt roads southward. We passed a big open-pit coal mine. The coal is mined, loaded onto a ship and taken up the coast to Vina del Mar to be processed. We turned left from there and followed the coastline to the end of the earth. Finally the bus stopped and we got out to walk about a mile (2 km) on a wood-slat-walkway down to the beach where we hoped to see penguins. It was cold and the wind was blowing pretty hard. I was wishing I had my coat and mittens, headband and scarf. (I left them at the hotel).  I was feeling especially cold, because when Jay and I went to lunch we were caught in a rainstorm complete with wind and thunder, and were thoroughly soaked. The first penguin we saw was just a few feet off the path, sitting in the opening of its burrow. It kindly posed for many pictures. We had been asked to speak quietly, and move slowly as to not startle the penguins.  About ten yards farther on, we came to an observation blind where we could look out on  10-15 penguins standing on a sand bar. As we watched, they waddled to a small pool, jumped in and swam to the next sand bar. We  took lots of pictures.

      It's hard to believe that we REALLY !WERE only 200 miles from Antarctica, and that we were seeing real penguines that look like the ones always pictured. It is hard to believe we are at the end of the world, the place we never dreamed we would see!

     On the way back, we spotted rheas, a silver fox on the run, and big, brown rabbits. There were some large birds, too, sitting on a fence post. We dont know what thery were.

     On the way back we asked the guide to take us to where the ship replicas were so we could take pictures. The place was closed, so we did the best we could with our telescoping lenses. Fifteen minutes after arriving at the hotel, we met again to go to dinner. I had salmon Wellington, asparagus with a lemon sauce, and au gratin potatoes. It was very good. Jay had a seafood soup and really liked it. Since we had to leave early the next morning we packed and went to bed. We still had wet clothes from the rain, so I used the hairdryer to dry them.