Penguins!!

Scientific studies have shown that penguins are among the cutest animals on earth. We had the opportunity to observe this remarkable degree of cuteness first hand yesterday. We are in Ushuaia, Argentina right now, the city known as "the end of the world" because it is the southern most city in the world. The island we visited has two kinds of penguins, Magellanic penguins (shorter, b&w) and Gentoo penguins(taller with orange beaks), and one single King penguin that noone understood what was doing there. We were advised not to get closer than seven feet which seemed to be the distance the penguins preferred as well. My only piece of advice would be to remember that an island full of penguins is likely also full of penguin poop, and lying on the ground to get that perfect photo is not such a great idea, especially when you have one jacket and one pair of warm pants.

The day before we hiked around Tierra del Fuego, the main park down here. Little islands, leaves changing color (its fall down here) and snow covered mountains in the background. It's pretty, but not as dramatic as the stuff we saw in northern Patagonia, on the Chilean side.

Up there, we visited Torres del Paine park where the mountains really tower over you and the lakes are an artificial looking pale blue. There is also a waterfall and a lake where big chunks of ice have fallen off a nearby glacier and are just bobbing along.

We also went to Perito Moreno park on the Argentine side to get up close to a glacier. They make it pretty easy with elevated walking paths and even a boat ride that gets you even closer. What we can see is twenty stories high, but some parts are as much as 600 stories deep. Just not the kind of thing you will see in one of the parks back home. Of course, none of this is.

Tomorrow we fly to Buenos Aires (sane people don't attempt the multi-day bus trip).