King Penguins

We had our coldest night yet in the RV. The weather reported 40 F but maybe a couple degrees colder where we are at.

We had a 11 am reservation for the King Penguin reserve at the bottom of the hill. In fact we could see the penguins through a magnified image on our phones from our camp. 

In 2008 the king penguins arrived in the bay and they have been there ever since. The colony is protected by the reserve and tickets are only $17 for each adult. The bay is shallow and fishing boats do not work the bay so food is plentiful for the colony. The king penguins do not mate for life and change partners every season. They sit on eggs for two months then the chicks are land bound for 10 months until their fuzzy feathers fall off and they are waterproof. Surprisingly first time parents are sometimes baffled by the egg and do not know what to do with them and usually an experienced partner teaches the other partner how to sit on an egg. King penguin are the second largest penguins right behind emperor penguins which live on ice pack. 

We walked to the observation area to watch the penguins. The chicks were one month old but already quite large. The penguins make a honking sound like geese. Some penguin were swimming and others were warming themselves. Our visit was for an hour and it was amazing.

We met a couple from Colorado on a six week trip in Patagonia and spoke with them for a while after. They had taken a two week tour and now were traveling on their own in a rental truck. They were now headed north up the carretera austral in Chile.

We had lunch in the parking lot and then continued on our drive toward the border crossing back into Argentina's side of Tierra del Fuego.

We filled water which took 45 min and then continued on to a campsite just outside of Ushuaia. The camp was down a hill by the river and horses. There were muddy potholes and wet grass and the front wheels slipped at one spot. We found a somewhat level spot and let the kids out.

We met an American family in a Chilean plated Peugeot boxer van similar to our ram promaster chassis and spent the next couple hours talking to them while our kids played. They had a two and four year old girl and boy. They were six weeks into their 3 month trip and had bought the van in Santiago and were headed back up the carretera austral after this. They lived in a small town in southern Utah and were planning on moving after this trip. They also mentioned possibly backpacking in Central America. They complained how difficult it had been to find water for their RV and didn't know about selecting for only water on the iOverlander map which otherwise would be crammed with too many icons.

We went back in the RV when it was too cold.