MUNGO EATS Latin America

Ah, another day, another adventure.  There is never a dull day on this voyage of ours.  Last night we were in Rada Tilly, a small town just outside Commodoro Rivadavia.  We didn’t really get to visit the town much, but what we did see showed us that it was a town with quite a bit of cash.  There is a lot of oil in this area of Argentina and I think this is where all the money is being spent.  The houses were all big, with large yards, and all the dogs were purebreds.  I saw samoyeds, weimeraners, labs, boxers, etc.  Yep, no “village dogs” here.

Our destination today was the Petrified Forest National Monument.   We visited a similar forest in the US and decided that we should visit one in the southern hemisphere and compare the two.  In the US, colorful crystals replaced the wood and the logs were swirls of many different colors.  Here, the wood looked more like wood, although there were some colorful bits.  We found that the logs here were larger, and the park is more relaxed about letting you touch the logs, so we could get some better pictures. 

There were several HUGE logs.  Some of the logs that we saw were 15 or 20 meters long, with trunk diameters of 1.5 to 2 meters.  Now I know that can be hard to imagine, so I have  some pictures to illustrate.  This is one of the longer  logs that we saw.

Sara is standing about in the middle and Kevin and Sean have almost walked to the end!!

Here are  some diameter pictures for you.

HUGE!!!  It is amazing how “wood looking” these rocks remain.

And you can see just how plentiful the logs are in this area.

Our other adventure today,  was unplanned and a lot less expected.  We were driving down the road and Sean suddenly noticed a bit of smoke coming from one of the cupboards.  We stopped to investigate and found a small electrical fire had started where one of the “extra” batteries is stored.  We have 3 batteries in the the van, one to start the van, one to power the lights and water pump and a third one to keep the fridge running.  The fridge battery is housed in one of the cupboards along with some other assorted van parts that Kevin has along just in case.  I will not try to explain what happened EXACTLY, but an assorted auto bit caused a short in some electrical thingy and this caused other assorted auto bits to get hot and start smoking.  That is what we were smelling.  All is well though, the smoldering auto bits are no longer usable, but really, we didn’t even have to get out the fire extinguisher.   So Mom…DON’T WORRY!!  From now on, nothing else goes in the battery cupboard!

Let’s hope for a nice boring day tomorrow!

Today we saw some penguins.  Well, actually not just ’some’.  Quite a few penguins.  At first  we thought it was no good (or at least I did).  Most of the first ones all hid in their Hidey Holes or behind bushes.

This is pretty disappointing.  Every once and a while you see a penguin head peeping over the bushes.  Once (actually many times) a penguin was standing beside the path.  I was thinking, okay, that’s cool.  But then we saw a fork in the path.  Standing on the branch to the left was a group of 4 penguins waddling around.  ON THE PATH!!!  If Mungo was with us, that would be the end of His Snoug (snog, his nose).  Don’t ask why, you’ll find out later.  I heard some noises coming from the right.  I thought it would be cool to see a penguin Hee-Hawing it’s head off (that’s right, they sound like donkeys).  Once the penguins started to grow more plentiful, we got better pictures.  One posed with it’s back to us.  Mom wanted to see it’s face, but it kept the same position and started wiggling it’s stubby little tail.  Wiggle wiggle then-PUTHHHHH-SPLAT it pooped towards us.  Then a tour crept up behind us.  Some words I caught were-”this white stuff it is their ****(S word, the bad one, not stupid).  We all laughed at that.  The tour group followed us along the way, guide telling the two peoples stoof, like ‘the penguins that live the farthest walk 4 hours to get to the beach to fish. Not a little dad and son trip for a day, but a dad or mom trip for 2 or 3 days.  Then, suddenly the park is filled with the black and white things.  Not Orcas, Penguins.  Look around if you go there.  Once a sign said ‘MAKE WAY FOR PENGUINS’

Then the tour guide behind us said that we were getting close to the  beach, and out of downtown.  Downtown is where Mom Dad son and daughter are standing, travelling and sleeping.  At downtown, the tour guide went away, but not without saying ‘don’t touch, once a big man did and the touched penguin tore off his finger, bone and all.  We met up at the supposedly best viewpoint and we caught the guide saying ‘that bird, it’s the only flightless duck in South America.  We ran away this time and started to leave, but the guide stopped us and asked ‘have you gone that way 300m yet?’  We said no, we haven’t and the guide told us we had to, it’s the best part.  And it was.  You had to watch where your feet landed, there were so many penguins. That was AWESOME!!!

                                                      THE END

We decided to visit Punta Tombo today, which we think is the largest Magellanic penguin colony on the continent.  We were pretty happy with the penguins we saw on the Valdez Peninsula, and both Kevin and I were questioning whether we should actually pay another park entrance fee to see yet more penguins.  We decided to go for it but at first we were thinking we had wasted our money.  There seemed to be fewer penguins and most of them were not posing as nicely as the last batch, a lot of them were in their nests or hidden by bushes.

However, as we walked farther and farther in to the reserve, we went from the suburbs, so to speak,

to the downtown core, and then we were swimming in penguins.

  The penguins that are in the furthest suburbs are a FOUR HOUR walk from the beach.  The penguin couples take turns going out to sea to feed, and will feed for a period or 2 or 3 days.  So every couple of days they make the trek to the beach, feed and make the trek back.  More room in the suburbs, but it comes at a cost!

There are SO many penguins that you have to walk around them. 

They stand on the boardwalks, and in your way, and you know, the sign says…make way for penguins! 

You are not allowed to touch them, but man, was it tempting when they were this close. 

We followed the rules though. 

Most of the penguins are in the process of moulting, and so there are a whole bunch of really bad hairdos out there. 

I think this guy was the worst one that we saw. 

During their moult, they do not go out to the ocean to feed, so they do not feed for a period of about 3 weeks.  In 2 or 3 weeks from now, a mass exodus of the penguins will take place.  From the end of April to September, they will migrate to the oceans off the coast of Brazil and will not come to shore at all during those months. 

So, in the end it was DEFINITELY worth the price of admission.  One of the highlight of the trip I would say.  I will remember this for a very long time!!

We explored the Valdez Peninsula today, in search of penguins, elephant seals, sea lions, and other wildlife.  There is a circular route around the peninsula, with a number of viewing stations located along the way. 

Our first stop was supposed to be a resting spot for elephant seals, but unfortunately no one had told the seals to be home for pictures today.  The second station proved almost as useless.  We could  see a few elephant seals in the distance, but they were terribly far away, and not even my 12X zoom camera could bring them into view.  I was starting to feel a little down.  We had driven about 100 km and seen very little.  The next stop was supposed to have penguins.  Here we were NOT disappointed.

There was a small wire fence setting the limits for how close you could get and the silly little birds were all snuggled up, almost touching the wire, to allow us a great view of them.  I got so many cute little pictures, that I had a hard time deciding which ones to include here.  Here are the winners. 

The final stop on the route was a station that was supposed to be good for sighting sea lions and elephant seas.  Again, the elephant seals shirked their modelling duties, but the sea lions were out in full force. 

We surprisingly saw a huge number of land creatures today.  There were many guanacos,

and lesser rheas.

I chased this hairy armadillo down in the desert trying to get a picture of him. 

I was feeling quite pleased with myself, for the shot I got.  What I did not realize was that they are not terribly afraid of people and we saw a number of them at the viewing stations, and one of them walked right up to us allowing me to get this shot (unzoomed).

We also saw a few Andean foxes running in the desert and thought we were quite lucky until we saw the restaurant staff at one of the viewing stations throwing them scraps.  Makes for a nice picture, but I wish they were not feeding them. 

So quite a good day of wildlife viewing. We hope to hit one more penguin viewing station as we head south, because really, how can you ever get enough  of these guys?

We are now in the very small town of Puerto Pyramides, in the  Valdez Peninsula Nature Reserve.  Since the town is located in the nature reserve, it’s population is limited to 200 permanent residents, so it is tichy. 

It takes a FULL day to travel the perimeter of  the peninsula to check out the wildlife, so we will do that tomorrow.  Today was a casual day, I did take some time to play with the new camera, to get an idea of what it can do. 

I really like the black and white coarse grain setting, and I really like the macro setting on this camera.  You can zoom in incredibly close.  Check out this larger than life picture of Mungo’s nose that Sara took. 

Okay, maybe that is a bit to graphic for you.  Check out the more politically correct picture of barnacles.

The film grain mode made for some interesting shots.

It seems to do well with landscapes too.

It is still “big”, but the more shots I see, the more I can forgive this shortcoming.  I can hardly wait to try it on some animals tomorrow.