The key industry in Puerto Madryn is aluminum processing. Not because they have a lot of aluminum; they just have a fancy factory and a deep port that allows ships from Australia to bring the raw material for processing.
And that’s about all I remember about Puerto Madryn. Well, that and the roaming homeless dogs and the trash strewn about because of the rather constant wind. But it was a warm wind! I wore shorts and sunscreen today for the first time all trip. Whoo hoo!
I quickly concluded that Puerto Madryn is Argentina’s Pocatello, Idaho. By that I mean, the best thing the town has going for it is that you can be in much better places in about two hours in any direction. It’s a great jumping-off point and not a place you’d really feel inspired to linger in.
Our tour (Purple #4) took us south to a penguin rookery.
Rookery! Isn’t that a fun word? For some reason, I imagine a bunch of penguins playing cards or billiards. What it really means is it was a protected colony of about 500,000 Magellanic penguins. Yes, I typed that correctly. Half a million penguins! We only saw maybe 2,000 of them but, ummm…2,000 penguins!!!
Today’s penguin experience (and truly, every day should have one) was totally different than a couple of days ago. Today was like the Grand Canyon whereas Bluff Cove in the Falkland Islands was like Bryce Canyon.
Bryce Canyon – and Bluff Cove – is smaller, easier to grasp, more photogenic. The Grand Canyon – and The Rookery – is massive, hard to comprehend, and an overwhelming display of nature.
After our 2.5-hour bus ride through the wind-blown, grassy, shrubby, green and yellow steppe of Patagonia, we arrived at the rookery’s walking path about 1 mile from the beach. The path was wooden slats, rocks, or dirt but always clearly marked and occasionally patrolled by Penguin Protectors (best job ever).
We were given 90 minutes to explore on our own and take as many photos as our memory cards would allow. We were instructed not to get more than about 3 feet from the penguins, not to touch them, and to allow them to cross our path with a wide berth. From this I understood one thing very clearly: we were going to get tantalizingly close to penguins!!!!
And indeed we did!
The little black and while Magellanic penguins were EVERYWHERE! Lots of adults, lots of fuzzy chicks probably 2-3 months old, and a fair amount of punk rock molting going on.
But unlike Bluff Cove, the setting for these penguins was that same grassy, shrubby steppe we saw on our way in from town. Not in the water, not on a grassy berm, not on the beach. These penguins had burrowed homes in the ground, some holes out in the open, many under small shrubs and bushes, all at least one mile from the ocean. It was so odd!
It was about 75 degrees with a very nice breeze but many penguins were enjoying the shade. Once we knew what to look for, we realized pretty much every low sagey green bush had a penguin or four hanging out underneath. It was mindboggling.
There was still lots of activity, though. Hundreds of penguins waddling, preening, feeding young. And the noise! Oh my gosh, it was a hysterical symphony of babies chirping and adults calling to their partners with a noise best described as a braying donkey. I recorded a video. It sounds like a bunch of seagulls even though that description didn’t even occur to me in the moment.
As we walked along, we had to stop a few times to allow a penguin to cross our path. A number of us acted as self-appointed Penguin Ambassadors and held back other tourists as the birds waddled by. If the commute didn’t suck so bad, I would have considered my actions as a job audition.
The walking path ended on a platform above the water. From there we were able to watch the penguins waddle up to the surf and sort of schlump into the water. They then swam in the ocean like ducks, their necks much narrower than they look on land when standing upright. Rob and I realized that a number of “ducks” we saw swimming in the waters the other evening as we left the Falkland Islands were actually penguins. OMG!
One of the very best moments, however, came just at the tail end of our penguin trek.
We took a little side path and discovered two very proximate, very regal, very fiber-wafting-in-the-breeze guanacos. Guanacos hanging out with penguins!!! Right in front of us!! Seeing the two together…and getting the photo…was like that time at the Fair a few years ago when I got a photo of Rojo the Llama with the Fair Court. Camelids with adorable matchy-matchy creatures! OMG!
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| All those dots in the background are penguins! |
Rob asked me which I liked best – Bluff Cove or the Magellanic Rookery. My real answer is I loved the combination of both. They were so different, it’s hard to choose between them.
Bluff Cove was magical. It was personal. It was like friends had invited us over to see their most prized possessions. It was penguins in the setting I think I expected: on the beach, in the water, with colorful contrasts of grass and ocean and sky and penguin.
The Rookery was exponential nature. It was thousands of penguins in an expansive, somewhat controlled setting. It was noisy. It smelled fishy. It was life. It was dynamic. It was in a totally unexpected, monochrome setting.
I came unglued and was utterly enthralled at Bluff Cove. I was quiet and thoughtful and blinking at the Rookery. I don’t think I would have appreciated either experience as much if I had not had the other as added perspective.
As is so much of life.
We are at sea tomorrow and then on to our fourth country of the trip before returning one last time to Argentina. Stay tuned!
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