The next morning we waited patiently and with intrepidation for our trip to see the penguins. To our relief, we were met by Antonio a young man with a meticulously polished older car and his mother. He took us the 20 miles down dirt roads and through very rural farms to the penguin rookery beach. Antonio spoke no English and he dutifully tried to explain the flora and fauna of the area. The local bus does not run to the beach so locals have to walk the last mile.
Here’s Antonio and his mom. Salt of the earth, nice people.
Another photo from the same bluff top point. The bay is huge, on the same order of magnitude as Santa Cruz Bay without any people. The island breeding area is still a mile or so further south.
We parked the car on the bluff above the beach and followed Antonio and his mom down a path hacked through the blackberry bushes to the beach. His mom peeled off the left to the restaurant overlooking the beach.
Chris is viewing the beautiful sand beach with the rookery on the offshore rocks.
We dropped his mom at work then hiked down to the beach to get the boats out to the penguin islands.
We followed Antonio the rest of the way to the beach and he took our photo perched on a rock. It was low tide and he showed us the various shell fish and seaweed that is harvested..
Here’s the fishing boat we went out in.
At the beach we were met by Elke, a German volunteer who explained the penquins in our language and went with us in the boat This is a picture of Elke and Chris, look similar?
The local fishermen manned a boat in the surf and we were unceremoniously pushed out to the boat in a wheeled cart so we would not get wet. Unfortunately, as we pushed out through the surf, a wave over the bow caught Alan unprepared and the camera died with the moisture. These are the last of our pictures.
Magellan and Humboldt penguins maintain breeding colonies together separately on these island. The males dig burrows and the females select mates based on the burrows. Sea lions lurk in the waters around the islands and kill the penguins after they have fed on fish to feed their babies. They eat the penquin stomachs for the fish and leave the rest of the body in tact. Te seas were strong and it looked dangerous just leaving the island. The islands were pieces of land, which broke off the mainland in the 1960 earthquake. The fishermen pointed out where the local soccer field is now under water. The whole island sank about a meter from the quake.
Anthony returned us to Ancud with some relief as he had as much trouble understanding us as we of him. He directed us to a local eatery, and we again dined on food we had little idea of what we ordered. Alan had the most enormous mountain of beef and French fries we had ever seen! We headed to the local bus terminal and returned to the mainland on the ferry. We hiked along the waterfront to our hotel and then we walked downtown Puerto Montt which has a lot of bars, shops and is the seaport and main commercial center for this area. It is very old and very new for here all at the same time. Again, it dramatically changed with reconstruction following the 1960 earthquake and has been rebuilt without it’s railroad
Click on LOCATION below for a map of the pinguineria
Ciao from Ancud, Alan & Chris
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