Traveling with Ellen

  Woodpecker outside the hotel door  Does anyone remember their high school world geography?  I certainly don't remember much.  It has taken this trip to make me look at a map of Chile.  It is over 2,650 miles long and at its narrowest, it is only 56 miles wide and at its widest, 276 miles. And now for the national park we are in,  Tores del Paine National Park.  We are in the extreme south of Chilean Patagonia.  It  is world-renowned for its unpredictable weather, pretty amazing views and the Andes mountain ranges.   Windy is an understatement.  Gusts over 75 miles an hour are not unusual on a daily basis.  The weather changes more here than any other place you can imagine. But the strangest bit is that during winter (June, July, August) there is NO wind.  It's just freezing cold! We slept in some this morning.  Wayne was awake last night much later than I.  He was finally able to work on his pictures and h...

  The weather held for us and we were allowed to travel by zodiacs.to the island of penguins.  We're told there are, in season, more than 120,000 penguins.  They arrive on the Island, males first in mid October.  The females follow within a month.  They search for their burrow from the previous year and settle down to propagate.  They mate for life.  By late November to mid December the baby's are hatching.   The juveniles grow up and by April, they are off into the water to warmer climates of Peru and northern Argentina and Chile.  Our summer is their winter. The island was also full of Dominican Seagulls.  They were as plentiful as the penguins. The chorus is coming together for practice  Back on board, we had breakfast at 8:30 am and then finished packing.  We will disembark before noon, go through immigration/customs and after a quick lunch, will have a six hour drive to our hotel at the edge of the Torre del Paine nat...