Santiago is the capital of Chile, and one of the captals of Latin America. It’s probably the most modern city in South America. The subway is fast and clean and quiet, with beautiful (seriously) spacious stations–big art on the walls, restaurants, and stores. Compared to Santiago, Buenos Aires seems kind of crumbling and run-down, although both cities have their own personalities. Even though Santiago (and most of Chile) is in serious earthquake territory, it has the tallest skyscrapers in South America, and they are building more. The city has a magnificent background of snow-capped mountains, but the air pollution usually keeps them hidden.

We had a full day in Santiago before Monica went off to a five-day zen retreat on the outskirts of town. We went to “El museo de memoria y derechos humanos.”  The museum of rememberance and human rights. It´s a museum dedicated to documenting the seventeen years of madness–1973-1990–when the military dictatorship ruled the country. The museum was inaugurated during the presidency of Michele Bachelet. She and her family were imprisoned and tortured during “la dictadura,” and her election in 2006 helped Chile to move forward, much like Nelson Mandela´s did in South Africa.

The museum has a lot of first-hand accounts of the brutalities and atrocities committed by the government. Photographs, stories, interviews, and original recordings of events. The dictatorship is still fresh in people´s memories. Pinochet didn´t leave office until 1990. More than 40,000 people were either imprisoned, tortured, or killed during his stay.

One thing that the museum doesn´t mention is the USA´s involvement in toppling the government and the assassination of Salvador Allende, and the installation of Augusto Pinochet as dictator. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger (then the secretary of state) directed the CIA and orchestrated the military coup that brought down the government and assassinated Salvador Allende. They were afraid of Salvador Allende’s (democratically elected) socialist governmetnt. Kissinger is famous for (among other things) saying, “I don´t see why we have to stand by and let a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.”

Allende was killed and the coup happened on the morning of September 11, 1973. The dictatorship immediately arrested anybody who they thought might not appreciate them, and they filled Santiago´s huge soccer stadium with prisoners. Severe oppression, torture, and death were the tools they used to control the population and keep their power. They justified their actions by saying that they were looking for stockpiles of weapons.

We are reading a novel as we travel. It´s Isabel Allende´s latest novel, El Cuaderno de Maya. It´s the story of a teenage girl from Berkeley who has to flee the country and she goes down to Chiloé, Chile. The novel talks a lot about Chiloé, and also the recent history of Chile. Isabel is the niece of Salvador. She has written a lot about the dictatorship. She says in this book that the dictatorship simply grew tired of what they were doing. The interrogators knew that there weren’t any weapons hidden, and they weren´t really looking for answers. They just wanted to intimidate the populace.

Incredibly, the people voted the dictatorship out, and the dictatorship allowed them to do so. The country held a vote in 1988. People could vote YES, for eight more years of the regime, or NO. The NO´s won, presidential elections were held, and the country had a new government.

It´s only been twenty three years. The scars are still here. But Chile is a hopeful, optimistic place.

The main highway in Chile goes north and south. Driving along, through the middle of the country, you can see how fertile and abundant it is. Ocean to the west, mountains and volcanoes to the east, the valley is green, with one river after another flowing down from the cordillera. The country has gone grape crazy. Hundreds of vineyards, the grapes are everywhere. Also, fields of corn and tons of other vegetables.

The town of Chillán is halfway between Valdivia and Santiago. It’s no longer in the south, starting to get up north. You can see volcanoes from downtown. Chillán has been hit hard in the past by earthquakes. The latest one was in February 2010. Chilenos are always ready for the next one.

The marketplace in Chillán is the center for all the region’s produce. Mountains of beautiful fruits and vegetables come into the market, and people come and take it away. It´s busy every day of the week. This was one of the best markets we’ve seen yet. The restaurants in the marketplaces are usually great. It’s a chance to eat regional foods without fanfare. We ate paila marina, pastel de choclo, longaniza con porotos, and we drank a few glasses of mote con huesillos. ¡Qué rico!

We went east from Chillán, toward the volcanoes,  in search of some mountain air and a peaceful new year. We got on a small local bus and went to Valle de Las Trancas, about seventy kilometers from town. The bus is the lifeblood of the people who live up the valley. People got on and off continually. Grandmothers and schoolchildren, farmworkers and families. Some people just put a package on board and told the driver or the guy (There’s always a guy riding with the driver. He collects the money, helps people on and off, and knows everything. He’s kind of like a conductor on a train, but that’s confusing here, because conductor means driver.) When they delivered a package, the bus would stop and honk, and somebody from a house would wander down to get the package. Most of the people who got on knew the driver. Everybody said hello and good morning, many of the passengers knew each other. The bus would stop for anybody who flagged it down, and would stop anywhere to let people off.

We got off in Las Trancas. It’s not a town or a village, more like just a few building along the road. We were oping to find a place to stay a few days until after the new year. Trancas is really geared for the wintertime and for skiing. The busy season here is June, July, August, the dead of winter. There is a ski resort eleven kilometers up the road. In summertime, it’s pretty empty, and most of the businesses (there aren’t many) were closed. It didn’t take long, however, to find “Chil-in.” It’s a little hostel and restaurant run by a dreaded French guy named Fipa. We stayed in a beautiful log cabin for the christening of 2013. Lots of birds (big woodpeckers–carpinteros) and trees and the river in the back. Very peaceful. Next door to Chil-in is a little coffeeshop run by Lena from Germany and Matías from Chile. We also met Andy, a competitive skiier from the south of Chile (Punta Arenas) who has spent most of the ten past winters skiing in Whistler. Now he´s moving here. He compares the area and the ski resort to how Whistler was twenty years ago, and he´s ready to settle, and he wants to be here as the area develops. Now he has a little business renting bikes, with or without a guide. (him) We hiked a bit along the river and also up to a viewpoint of the valley and mountains. This was directly in back of our cabin. We enjoyed the quiet and the solitude of the mountains and welcomed in 2013. Early in the morning of January 4, we got on a bus to the capital of Chile, Santiago.

A few weeks have passed since we were in Chiloé, and we have left Southern Chile and its clouds and rains. Now we are in Santiago, the capital of Chile, in the middle of the country. It is sunshiney and eighty five degrees. Monica at the moment is at a five-day zen retreat on the outskirts of the city, and Mike is exploring the town on his own.

After Chiloé, we traveled up to Valdivia, and arrived there on December 23, in time to hunker down for  Christmastime. We stayed there for five nights in our cozy hostel and with our newfound, temporary, international community. It really doesn´t take much to make friends on the road. As soon as the tents are up and the fires are going, all is well.

Valdivia is a small, pretty university city near the coast in Southern Chile. It´s a river town with a lot of rain, and it rained while we were there. The town is just inland from the coast, and we saw lots of cormorants and pelicans, and lots of sea lions, hanging around the seafood marketplace.

This is the Pacific Ocean, just like in Oregon. It is great to be back on the west coast. We spent a lot of time inside our beautiful Aires Buenos Hostel. Viella is the owner. She’s from Eureka, California, and has even spent time in Eugene. She’s lived in Valdivia for a long time, and has created a very welcoming place for travelers passing through.

Monica and Viella

We cooked a big pot of black bean soup the first day we were there, a perfect rainy-day meal. Christmas Eve and Christmas were real events. Christmas Eve featured sushi, ceviche, and French crepes, as well as a Santa Claus origami workshop, led by Monica. The sushi was a group project. For many of the sushi rollers, it was their first time rolling sushi.

Luzy from Germany and Victoria from Austria learning about sushi from Japan

Mosa from France was in charge of the ceviche. He was sure to cook the shrimp.

Sonya

Sonya from France was the crepe maker. She said that everyone, yes everyone, in France knows how to make crepes from the time that they are kids.

The origami session was very well attended and enthusiastic. The next day, ten of us contributed time and money for a group mid-afternoon dinner, which began with our new favorite drinik–pisco sours. Moni whipped some up to please the crowd. Sandra and Martin, from Germany, cooked salmon and roasted veggies. Mike made a six-strand challah, and there was plenty of wine and champagne to stretch the afternoon into the evening. We’ll remember Valdivia as our last glimpse of Southern Chile before heading north into the warmer weather, and for celebrating our 28th anniversary there. We’ll remember the walks by the river and the refuge of the hostel, staying dry while it was raining, and enjoying our friends, as well as the backporch for a few bacgammon games.

Chiloé is an archipelago of islands in southern Chile. There is one big island, La Isla Grande, and then about forty smaller ones. Some of them are uninhabited, and others have small towns. You can get to some of these islands by public transport, buses and ferries, and others can only be reached by small boats. Chiloé is a part of Chile, but it has its own culture, history, and identity. Nowadays, it’s very accessible, and there are lots of tourists, a lot from Santiago. Cruise ships even make stops here on their way north or south, but all this is pretty recent. Chiloé has evolved more or less separately from the rest of Chile.

Chiloé is a culture of boats, woodworking, sheep, and fishing.

It rains here. The guidebook says that when it’s not raining, it’s misting or drizzling. It is green green green, with rolling hills and extremely picturesque vistas of bays and inlets. 

Castro is the main city. Castro is known for its palafitos. These are homes built over the water, on stilts. The high tide comes under the houses, and the low tide recedes over the mudflats. 
You often see boats that look like they’re stranded, but they’re just waiting for the tide to come in again.

Boats are a way of life for the people who live on the outer islands. We stayed in a small town called Achao, on a small island called Quinchao. Achao is reallly slow. Monica said that it is similar to Kaunakakai, the main city on Molokai, except that Achao is a little slower. Achao does, howerver, have a couple of grocery stores, and the people on the islands make the crossing on a boat when the sea is calm to stock up on groceries. We arrived in the middle of a gale that had been blowing for a few days. Not unusual. Nobody could come to the island until the wind died down. the next day was calm, and the ocean was flat. Boats arrived all day at the dock. People jumped off and walked into town. A few guys cleared the slippery seaweed that had come up on the dock, and pickup trucks drove down to the boats with supplies to carry back home. People and boats coming and going all day long.

Handicrafts are an important part of life here. Every town has its own Feria Artesanal. These “fairs” are open, usually, every day of the year, and they serve many different purposes.

From the hands of the people of Chiloé

TThey are definitely a source of income, as the craftspeople sell their stuff to people passing through, as well as to local people. Most of the things for sale are woolen goods, both knitted and woven. Beautiful wool hats, vests, ponchos, sweaters, as well as decorative dolls and woolen renditions of specific Chiloé mythical figures. These include beautiful mermaids and sirens, mischievous trolls, and even some downright evil and menacing creatures of the forest. In addition to the source of income, the handicrafts are also a link between the past, present, and future. We were fortunate enough to be in Achao on December 21, when the annual event honoring and celebrating the handicrafts fair is held. There was a fashion show, featuring the kids of the knitters and weavers, some of them impossibly cute, wearing the beautiful and detailed, naturally dyed from their own sheep wool. The colors of the vests and hats and sweaters represent the islands of Chiloé. Green for the countryside, white, grey, brown, and black for the earth and sky.

At the event, there were traditional songs, guitarrists and singers. And there was a moving and heartfelt speech that explained the relevance of handicrafts during our modern times. “In the old days, it wasn’t called handicrafts,” he told all of us. “It was just our daily life. It was the clothes we wore, the boats we built, the homes we lived in, the bags we used to harvest potatoes.” He talked about how easy it would be to lose their culture, now that we can buy anything we want. He talked about how wonderful it was to see the grandmothers working with their daughters and granddaughters, knitting and weaving and producing, the same way that the generations past had done. The feria is definitely  woman-powered. At the end of the event, all of the artisans were called up to the stage, 12 women, most of them grandmas. The keepers of the culture.

The people of Chiloé know that everything changes. They realize the challenge of simultaneously keeping the past and embracing the future. Cell phones and computers are everywhere. A new airport was just finished near Castro. But the songs and the artesanias continue also.

At

Our bank cards arrived on Saturday (the post office fellow recognized us when we walked in and had the envelope ready!) and on Sunday we took the bus over the mountains to Chile. It rained along the way, so we had no great vistas, but the scenery was impressive none the less. We arrived in Puerto Varas on the shore of of Lake Llanquihue in late afternoon.

Lakefront of Puerto Varas

The rain had stopped and in the evening the clouds lifted enough that we could see the tops of the two volcanoes towering across the lake.

Mount Calbuco

Calbuco 10 minutes later

Mount Osorno

We stayed at a small, friendly hostel a block from the lakefront. Again, our fellow guests were European. English and French were spoken as much or more than Spanish.

Common room at Hostal Margouya

We had our first taste of Chilean seafood in Puerto Varas. Paila marino, Mike’s favorite, is a clear broth filled with 8-10 different kinds of fish and shellfish. I had a crab chowder so thick with crabmeat that the spoon stood up in it. We did not know what we were missing when we passed up the pisco sours, but we found out the next day when we reached Chiloé.

San Carlos de Bariloche is a resort town on the shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi in the Argentine Andes. An international tourist destination in both summer and winter, we chose it as a reasonable spot to receive mail general delivery. Our bank cards had expired and our angels in Eugene, Jayne and Mary, were forwarding the new cards to us express mail. Unbeknown to us, a transportation strike in Buenos Aires was holding up the delivery. The frustration and uncertainty of waiting, as well as the variable weather, definitely colored our impressions of this picturesque place.

Briefly, Bariloche is famous for its timbered architecture and chocolate. There were crowds of tourists: organized tour groups of Argentines in matching sweat shirts and loud, informal groups of young Israelis on their year paid sabbatical after three years in the army. Our first hostel was in the tourist neighborhood. We only discovered residential, and hip, Bariloche on our last day.

View from our hostel window

Outside of daily visits to the Correo Argentino (post office), we did manage to find some fun. One nice day we rode the municipal bus along the lake shore to the national park. Just outside the entrance was a grand hotel, the Llao Llao, very reminiscent of Timberline Lodge. Huge log pillars and woodlined walls in the lobby, with two great stone fireplaces at each end. We had a coffe and hot chocolate and people watched for an hour, and the bill came to $20 American! Afterwards we took a hike in the park which ended in views across the lake.

¨Cauquén real¨ Ashy headed geese on the hotel lawn

Mike on the trail

Giant Arrayán tree

View at end of trail

El Bolson is a town that is famous in Argentina for its counterculture vibe. The hippies moved here in the sixties to escape the big cities and to start a new life. It’s a small town, another one without a traffic signal, and the vibe definitely is here, with its street art fair three days a week, public art, alternative healers, and its beautiful plazas. “El Bolson” roughly is translated as “Big shopping bag.” The town is on a flat valley floor, completely surrounded by steep mountains. The town is the bottom of the bag.

We stayed in a beautiful little hostel called “Casa del Arbol.” It’s a house with about five rooms, a kitchen, and a big back yard. We met people there from France, Germany, Slovenia, Spain, Argentina, and a couple from Switzerland who are traveling around the world. They had already been gone for 18 months.

One night we built a fire in the parrilla, and we shared an asado for dinner. Everybody who was interested chipped in, and we went shopping, with Pau from Catalunya. (Please, not Spain, but rather Catalunya.) Estafania was a pro cooking up the dinner.

Another evening, we contributed again, and nine of us shared a meal. It was fun going to the supermarket with two chicas from France and a chico from Catalunya.

Our highlight in El Bolson was the kayak trip on Lago Epuyen. We told Sergio, the owner of the hostel, that we were interested in renting a kayak for the day, to go out on the lake. Lake Epuyen is a big, glacier-fed lake pretty close to town. Sergio said that he would call his friend Miguel, (another Miguel) who lived near the lake and had some kayaks. Miguel would meet us at the bus stop, drive us and the kayak 15 kilometers on a dirt road to the lake, drop us off, then pick us up later in the afternoon. Sounded great. Soon, though, our solo trip turned into an outing with four double kayaks and eight people. Sergio, Nadia, and Pau from the hostel, Miguel and his son Francisco and their friend Fabian decided to come along also. It was fantastic. The five of us from the hostel drove to Miguel’s house, where we got organized. Who would paddle with who, etc.

Monica, Sergio, and Pau, talking it over

We drove to the lake, loaded up, and took off. It was a brilliant sunny day and the water was deep deep blue blue. Before we actually took off, Sergio and Pau went to a store and made sure that we had plenty of food and wine for lunch.

Who’s going to paddle, and who’s going to drink?

Making sure the wine is safe

The crew before takeoff

Paddling was a dream. The water was so so clear, so so clean. We drank cupfuls of it as we paddled. We paddled to a far shore and stopped for lunch on a beach.

Six of us went for a hike up a small canyon to a spring that gushed out of the mountainside into a waterfall, while Fabian and Sergio stayed on the beach, built a fire, and started cooking steaks on a steel disk. When we returned from our hike, we sat in the shade, eating steak sandwiches and passing around the bottles of wine. Not like most of our hikes in Oregon.

After lunch, and a rest, we paddled to the other side of the lake, to another beach, for a mate break. Argentinos can’t go too long without mate. It’s a drink kind of like tea, that you make by steeping leaves in a mate bowl, then sipping. Another fire was built, enough to heat a pot of water, then the water was poured into a thermos. We all shared some mate and cookies before loading up the kayaks again and beating into the headwind, back to the truck.

Kind of like the hoboes

Another successful outing!

Hostelling in Argentina has been super comfortable, friendly, and fun. The first hostel that we stayed in was in Esquel. This was also our first glimpse of the Andes. We hope to see much more. Esquel is a small mountain town in Patagonia and without a traffic signal. It’s a ski town in the winter (June, July, August.) In the summer, it’s a little quieter, with people coming to hike in the mountains and swim in the lake.

Our hostel was called Casa del Pueblo. A hostel is defined as a place where you can stay, which also has an equipped kitchen ready to use, some common area to hang around in, and access to the internet. Most of them have a choice of shared dorm rooms or private rooms with private bathrooms. Most of the guests show up with backpacks.

We immediately felt at home. We were greeted by a chica from France,  Aline, who showed us our room and gave us a tour. The kitchen was the center of activity in Casa del Pueblo. The following day was rainy, so we went shopping and cooked up a big pot of black bean soup for everyone. It was very fun for us to cook in the kitchen, and a treat for everyone, including us, to sit around the table later that afternoon with bread, wine, and soup.

Flávia is on the far left. She is an astronomy student from Brasil. She especially enjoyed it, because black beans are part of the Brasilian culture, and in Argentina, nobody eats beans. For Virginia, who lives in Esquel, it was the first time ever eating beans. They eat meat in Argentina. In the hostel, we met people from France, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Argentina, and a couple from Alberta who were traveling around the world.

I also had the chance to bake some bread. This really endeared us to the place. Our old friend Lief once told us, “In any community, carpenters and bakers are always welcome.”We shared a few more meals, but by far the most impressive one was Empanada Night. Empanadas might be considered Argentina’s national food, because they are everywhere, every day. They are little meat or vegetable or chicken turnovers, filling wrapped around with dough, then baked.

Natalia is the owner of the hostel, and she has friends who like to drop by. On this evening, Maxy (Maximiliano) and his wife Florencia came by with their friend Gustavo. They went shopping for ingredients, returned to the hostel with a mountain of meat and vegetables, and eighty rounds of empanada dough. “Team work,” they said. It is fun to be a part of a group, working together on a big project.

Making eighty empanadas is a big project, like making a ton of tamales. The first thing you do is open some wine bottles, the cut the meat into little pieces, chop the vegetables, and then cook them on a big disco. A disco is a disk from a tractor, that’s used to plow the fields. Heavy steel. They’re used over really hot fires and they can stand the heat. Here is Maxy showing Mike how it’s done. After everything was cooked, we filled the dough, pinched it together, baked them, and ate them. There was still some filling left after we filled all eighty empanadas, so Natalia quickly whipped up some more dough for a tarta. Lots of good cheer, lots of good food, everything still going strong at midnight. El Parque Nacional Alerces is close to Esquel. It’s a national park with lakes, rivers, hiking trails, and glaciers. Alerces are a type of cypress tree, and there is one specific tree that’s more than 4500 years old, one of the oldest living things on the planet. We didn’t go to see it, because you have to take a boat ride of a few hours, and we preferred to hike in the forest.

We went there on two separate days. A local bus takes you there in the morning, and brings you back in the evening. The first day, we hiked along the shore of Lake Futalaufquen.The next time, two days later, it was a beautiful sunny day, and we went a little further into the park, to enjoy the forest and the water. We sat on the shore of Lake Menendez, and looked at the glacier in the distance, and we hiked along El Rio Arellanes. A perfect day in the forest.

Lupines

Patagonian summer in December

Late in the afternoon, after hiking a bit and a nap, we walked up to the road, and then flagged down the bus to take us back home to the hostel.

Halfway down Argentina´s scalloped coastline is a stalked polyp of land called Península Valdés. Early European settlers mined the salt basins and grazed sheep on the barren steppes. Wool, hides and salt were shipped from the natural ports created by its unique formation. These protected beaches are also breeding grounds for thousands of marine mammals and birds. The entire huge peninsula is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and strictly regulated.

In our rental car we spent the whole day driving kilometers and kilometers of gravel road (ripio) between viewpoints.

Along the way, we saw guanacos (vicuñas) and sheep,

and choiques (lesser rheas).

We followed one choique with a brood of nine young slowly down the road and stopped to take photos. Afterwards we were gently scolded by a park ranger for getting out of the car. “This is the animals’ home, not ours.”

Our first stop was a penguin colony, though tiny compared to what we would see the next day in Punto Tombo. At the other two viewpoints, we could look down on the beaches and see elephant seals and sea lions (lobos marinos).

A hairy armadillo – peludo – scurried around the parking lot at Punto Norte and we saw many lizards and geckos along an interpretive trail.

Our final stop of the day was not on the tourist map, but told to us by Lilian, the car rental agent. Another long gravel and sand road led to Punta Valeras where we finally could climb down to the ocean. At the base of a sand cliff we found ourselves on a long shelf of rock jutting into the ocean, forming one wall of a cove. We sat at the edge looking out to sea and watching the tide come in.

We were nearly ready to leave when a whale surfaced in the cove. Then a second, smaller one followed. Ballenas franca austral, southern right whales, mother and calf. Broad bulbous heads covered with barnacles. A whalewatching boat crowded with school kids slowly circled them.

For maybe 15 minutes the whales lingered in the cove, sometimes coming up right alongside the boat. Then they headed out to sea. They surfaced one more time, 20 feet in front of us! We had the camera ready . . . and the battery went dead. Arrgh! But the memory will live on . . .

Penguins

We rented a car and drove out to Punta Tombo, a point of land that juts out into the ocean, about 100 miles south of Puerto Madryn, Patagonia. Punta Tombo is a nesting ground for Magellanic Penguins. There are more than 250,000 breeding pairs, more than 500,000 adult penguins, plus their little pichoncitos. We went there expecting to see penguins, but we were totally blown away, awestruck, and boquiabiertos (openmouthed) by the quantity, beauty, and intimacy.

We were there at the end of November. All the chicks have already hatched. It’s the beginning of summer. Penguin life at Punta Tombo goes something like this: In September, the males begin to arrive from the ocean. They climb out onto the beach, then walk through the steppe of Patagonia to find a good spot for their nest. The steppe is pebbles and dirt and bushes. It’s desert. They walk as far as a kilometer before digging their nest. They return to the same nest year after year, so if they’ve already dug one in past years, they’re all set. That is, unless another guy wants to take it from him. There are lots of fights for the good spots. Here is a photo of a high density nesting area.

A few days later, the females begin to arrive, and the drama really starts. If the female is already in a bonded pair, she finds her mate. Otherwise, the singles find each other, with lots of fights and blood between the males. Then there is courtship and mating, egg laying, and then caring for the chicks. How do they all return at the same time? How do the pairs find each other? We don’t know. What we know is that from April until September, they have been in the ocean, with never touching land.

After the chicks are born, the male and female share all the responsilities. The responsibilities are guarding the chick, and getting food to feed the chick as well as the guarder. They take turns. One of them stays at the nest with the chick, and the other one walks to the ocean to hunt and fish. This is what we saw—-hundreds and hundreds of penguins walking to the ocean, and hundreds and hundreds of them returning to their nests. The ones going to the ocean are red and brown and dirty, and also skinny, from being at the nest. The ones returning to the nests are clean and white and fat.

They take turns, one of them caring for and guarding the chicks, and the other makes the long journey to the ocean to hunt and eat as much as they can, before returning to the beach and making the long journey back to their nest to regurgitate food for their mates and chicks. This can take a few days or longer. The one who stays at the nest waits and guards. There are a lot of predatory birds flying around, looking for an opportunity to swoop down and grab a chick. We witnessed this. A skua dove down to the nest and flew off with a chick in its bill, angrily followed by a bunch of sea gulls, who wanted the tasty morsel for themselves

If the adult penguin who is out fishing does not return, the one at the nest finally has to make a decision. Stay longer at the nest or go fishing her or himself. If they stay, they can die of starvation. If they go, their chick will inevitably be eaten by the birds. Tough life!

We saw lots of little chicks They are all black, like little mice. They were usually lying under their parent. The parents care for and guard the chicks for about three or four months. Then, starting in March, the penguins begin to dive into the ocean and disappear. By mid-April, there are no more penguins there. The place is empty until September, when the first males again appear, and they start the whole thing over again. The penguins can live for 30 years.

We also watched them grooming each other, and we saw a few squabbles.

The most amazing thing, besides the quantity, was the intimacy. I mean, they were right there. One of the rules of the place is that the penguins always have the right of way. If you are walking down a path and there´s a penguin crossing in front of you, you have to stop and let it go first. They have no fear of humans. I don’t think that they even noticed us, although a few times it did seem like one or two of them looked me in the eye. At any time, we could have reached down and petted them or hugged them. (Everybody wanted to.) The rangers were extremely diligent in clearly telling everybody that the penguins’ bills are very strong, and they can easily cut through and take off your finger. That’s good incentive for not petting them. There were certain high-traffic areas, used intensively by the penguins on their way to or from the water. The caretakers built bridges for the humans there, so we could stand above them and they could continue on their way.

Everybody loves penguins. Maybe it’s because they look like little humans. They definitely walk like little humans. Their little arms hang down and they just toddle along. All around us we heard people exclaiming and oohing, “Qué lindo!”  “Qué hermosura!”  “Qué amorosos!”

There is no doubt that they are as adorable as can be. But what impressed me the most is how goddam tough they are.

What do they think of us? What do they think we are? It can get humanly crowded there, with loads of tourists descending from buses. The penguins just walk, or rather, toddle, right past us without a care. They might think that we are just big penguins.