Monday, February 19, 2018- Cruise Day 27; Puerto Madryn

Monday, February 19, 2018- Cruise Day 27; Puerto Madryn

We had breakfast in the dining room and then got ready for our all day excursion on Puerto Madryn.  The ship docked and the very narrow pier was filled with tour buses. Our bus loaded up and there ended up being a few empty seats, so we were each able to take a window seat.  Puerto Madryn has a beach right next to the cruise ship pier. There were a few boats on modified trailers hooked up to giant tractors that looked positioned to be launched like what we have to do at Oak Harbor’s marina because the ramp isn’t steep enough.  The city looks well developed and cared for, but there favelas evident on the outskirts of town.  Once we got out of the city, it became evident that the terrain in this part of Patagonia is very much like the desert southwest, without cactuses.  It is very arid and there are no trees, except along rivers.  The moisture from the Pacific is wrung out of the air by the Andes, leaving the Argentinian side of Patagonia an arid desert environment.  There are large ranches where cattle run, and there are llama-like critters, and emu-like critters around.  

We were headed to Punto Tombo Natural Reserve where the world’s largest nesting colony of Magellanic penguins is located.  It is a 3 hour drive from Puerto Madryn, so we drove past a lot of sage brush.  Halfway there, we stopped briefly at a huge fiberglass dinosaur monument that was erected to mark where the world’s largest dinosaur fossil was discovered.  The bones are at a museum in Puerto Madryn.  

When we finally arrived at Punto Tombo, we eagerly headed down the trail since we only had 90 minutes to see the reserve.  We had our eyes laser focused down the trail, but then looked around and saw that there were penguins everywhere.  There were penguins nesting just inches from the trail, and other penguins actually lying around on the trail.  If you looked around the hills, you could see penguins sticking up all over like prairie dogs.  They nest in shallow holes dug into the hillsides and ground, and return to the same nests year after year.  The chicks were nearing fledging from the nests, shedding their downy feathers, so many looked a bit ragged.  There were also a few that didn’t make it.  We saw a seagull pecking away at a new casualty, who’s parents apparently fell prey to a sea lion, orca or other predator.  At the end of the trail as a beach where hundreds of penguins were hanging out, some going out in the waves, and others coming in.  It kind of looked like Copacabana beach for penguins.  

Looking further along the coast, there were dozens of similar beaches, all covered with penguins as far as the eye could see.  On the next beach up, we spotted a huge great petril chasing penguins around on the beach, apparently hoping to find a weak one for lunch, but the penguins all made it away from the petril as it tired of the chase.  

It was a long drive out to Punto Tombo and back to the pier, but it ultimately turned out to be well worth the effort.  

We returned to the ship just before it pulled away from the dock.  It’s a good thing we were on a Princess excursion, which guaranteed the ship would wait for us.  We grabbed a quick dinner and attended the President’s day 7:45PM trivia, which turned out to be a very difficult trivia.  We thought we totally bombed it, scoring 8/20, but the winners scored 12/20, so it wasn’t just us having trouble.  

We attended the Showtime Comedian’s show by Doug Funk, a stand-up improv comedian who spent some time at Toronto’s Second City.  He got off to a slow start but managed to keep us entertained for another evening.  

We retired to our room and watched Wonder on TV, and called it an early night.  Tomorrow is another at Sea day en route to the Falklands Islands.