PATAGONIA: Spectacular Scenery and Abundant Wildlife

View from Hosteria Pehoe in Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

The trip to Patagonia in 1995 is among our top family vacations ever. At the extreme southern tip of South America,  Patagonia is a land of rugged seashores, jagged mountains, enormous glaciers, and vast, windy grasslands. It is half the size of Alaska with just 1.5 million inhabitants. As the climber Yvon Chouinard, founder of the Patagonia outdoor clothing line, says, “It is a mystical, almost imaginary place.” 

Rounding up the cattle

Some people in Patagonia live on remote estancias, or ranches, but the majority reside in Punta Arenas, a city that had its heyday in the era of clipper ships.  In those days, before the Panama Canal was built, ships traveling from Europe and the east coasts of the Americas had to go around the southern tip of South America to reach San Francisco and other west coast ports.  Victorian style architecture still dominates Punta Arenas.

Magellanic Penguin

Punta Arenas (which means Sandy Point in Spanish) sits on the edge of the Straits of Magellan, the connector of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. We flew into the Punta Arenas airport and then rented a car and drove north to the spectacular national park, Torres del Paine, passing few cars or signs of habitation on the way.  We did stop at a penguin colony and walked the paths between the nesting burrows of Magellanic penguins, who go there each Austral summer to raise their chicks. (See my post for June 20, 2011.)

Mustering the sheep on the Patagonian plain.

The broad plains bordering the Straits of Magellan provide rich grazing for huge herds of sheep and cattle and nesting grounds for millions of birds.  As we drove north we were awed by the giant flocks of flamingos, endless nesting geese, and vast array of small birds, all in the midst of laying eggs and rearing their young.

Torres del Paine is truly one of the last Edens on Earth.  Towering granite peaks rise above ice cold lakes, and flocks of giant Andean condors soar on the updrafts created by the ever present winds that collide with the mountains.  On the grassy slopes below the peaks, herds of guanacos, once in danger of becoming extinct, are now multiplying. Patagonia is a wildlife photographer’s paradise. I used a few of the photos we took of guanacos, foxes, penguins, and rheas (South American relatives of ostriches) to illustrate my book South American Animals (Morrow, 1999.)

Guanaco, Torres del Paine

In Torres del Paine we stayed at Hosteria Pehoe, a comfortable and somewhat rustic hotel with a spectacular view of the “torres”, or towers, of rock that are the iconic image of the park.  The hotel where we stayed when we went to Chile’s Atacama desert four years ago, the Tierra Atacama, has recently opened a sister hotel in Torres del Paine called the Tierra Patagonia.  Here’s a short (one minute) video from Tierra Patagonia that gives an overview of what you can expect when you visit the park.  It brought back many memories for us.  We’d love to go back someday.  Perhaps we will!
Update:  Here's another absolutely amazing video from Tierra Patagonia.  Enjoy!

Patagonian Penguins

Visiting a Penguin Colony in Southern Chile (December 1996)

The Otway Sound in southern Chile is the summer home of thousands of Magellanic penguins. These "warm weather" penguins are recognized by white rings around the face and chest.

    Penguins were everywhere.  Some rested on the beach, cleaning themselves after a day at sea.  Others marched like teams of tuxedoed soldiers across the short grass.  Parent penguins and their chicks peeked out of their underground burrows. We were in southern Chile visiting a nesting colony of Magellanic penguins at the edge of the Otway Sound (Seno Otway) on the Magellan Strait.  Each spring more than 1000 of these plump seabirds come ashore to this windswept plain to mate, lay eggs, and bring up their young.  Although we were bundled in warm coats to protect us from the chilly wind, the penguins seemed to be enjoying the long hours of summer sunshine.

On the Beach

     As we watched the penguins waddle across the grass they reminded us of comical waiters. Unruffled by the constant winds that sweep across the southern tip of South America, penguins are well equipped to withstand the harsh weather of this region. Luckily for us, the weather on the day we visited was mild and sunny.  Because we were so far south and it was near the summer solstice, the sun remained high into the sky until well into the evening.


 Don't Touch the Penguins!

Magellanic penguins stand about two feet tall and weigh about seven pounds. They live along the coasts of Chile, Argentina and the Falkland Islands.  They are named after the explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, who saw them on his historic trip around the world between 1519 and 1522.

Obeying the sign that warned us not to touch the penguins, we followed the winding path through the colony. A fence separated us from the nesting area.  The birds paid little attention to us and went about their business cleaning their nests, tending their chicks, or making their way to and from the water.

The Southern Hemisphere spring begins in September and that is when the penguins begin to arrive at their nesting colonies.  Waddling up the shore on sturdy webbed feet the penguins search for good nest sites.  Digging in the soft ground, they make a nesting burrow. Once a penguin pair has mated they stay together for their whole lives.   Older pairs usually return to the same nest hole that they used the year before. 

Penguin Chicks

Penguins preen their feathers to keep them clean and waterproof.  The fluffy chick on the right will get its adult feathers in a few weeks.

Six weeks after eggs have been laid, they are ready to hatch.  The newly hatched chicks weigh about three ounces and look something like furry gray tennis balls.  Like all baby birds, penguin chicks are always hungry.  For the rest of the summer, their parents take turns going to sea to catch fish to feed them.  When the adult bird returns to the burrow, it coughs up partly digested food and feeds the chicks.

Young penguins come out of the burrow for the first time when they are about six weeks old.  As we walked through the colony we could see some of the young birds peering cautiously out of their nest holes.  Others stood by the entrance with their parents.  By the time young penguins are eight weeks old they are completely covered with smooth, oily feathers.  Then they are ready to join their parents in the water.

Penguin parents watch over their chicks closely.  They have to protect them from foxes, large seabirds and other animals that might harm them.  We saw a Patagonian fox, or zorro, bound across the shore with a conger eel in its mouth.

A Memorable Visit
We visited the penguin colony in December when it was bustling with activity.  But by March all the penguins would go back to sea for the winter.  Then all would be quiet on the shores of  Otway Sound until the next nesting season.  We were lucky to visit during the few months that the penguins spend on land. 

Getting there: We flew from Santiago, Chile, to Punta Arenas, Chile’s most southern port city.  We were on our way to Torres del Paine National Park.  After renting a car (actually a small Toyota truck) at the airport, we stopped at the penguin colony on our way from the airport to Punta Arenas where we spent our first night before heading north.  A sign on the highway marked the dirt road that led to the penguin colony.

Penguins at the Zoo: You don’t have to travel to South America to see a breeding colony of Magellanic penguins.  Instead, go to the San Francisco Zoo.  Every spring, you can see penguin parents and their fluffy chicks standing outside their nest holes.  I wrote about these penguins in my book Penguin (Morrow Junior Books, 1988), illustrated with photos by Richard Hewett.  It is out of print but you may be able to find it in the library.  It inspired my visit to the colony at Seno Otway when I went to Patagonia with my family several years later.