Another busy day. Today we had a full day with two trips, in the morning we went into the Tierra del Fuego National Park. It is fascinating and we saw Austral Parakeets and an absolutely massive beavers lodge... but no beavers. The park is very well maintained with tight controls of people to ensure the countryside is not damaged.
With an hour and half break in the middle of the day we had a chance to grab a couple of ‘empanadas’ (a bit like Argentinian Cornish pasties) and... to collect our laundry. This has become a bit of an event during our trip since the occasion I ‘lost’ the place that was laundering our clothes in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile and then had to beg a complete stranger to collect our laundry as we would not be in town to collect it ourselves in Puerto Varas! This time I covered all points - I photographed the launderette and marked its location on the town map. I asked the closing time and arranged to collect at lunch time. When I walked in today all the staff at the back of the place shouted out “Senora Ford” and waved! Where else would you get a welcome like this? The funny thing was much later in the day when we were waiting for a lift back to the hotel, a van drove by frantically tooting and wound the windows down shouting “Senora Ford” and waving!
After this laundering excitement we went through a lot more bureaucracy to ensure we could take an afternoon boat trip into the Beagle Channel. I have been rather concerned about this trip as it can be very rough so I dutifully took a ‘Kwells’ seasickness tablet. The sea was like a mill pond. It could not have been more calm on the Diana Fountain pond in Bushy Park!
It was a lovely catamaran with plenty of space for all and we sat on the top deck for the entire trip. We were taken up close to islands covered with Blue-eyed Cormorants and another covered in sea lions. There were a number of massive bull sea lions with their hareems of females making a real racket. Although we did not go far out of the channel it is quite a thought that it is only a stretch of water between us and the Antarctic.
A very good day... although Colin still did not get to wear his balaclava!
Love the light and the textures on these sea lions, fav. I also love your written account--where else would I find a phrase like "After all this laundering excitement"?
October 29th, 2015
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