punta arenas

so we set off for our 2 weeks of vacation, flying to punta arenas.
the hostel we picked out is cute and small, a run-down house with a bunch of bedrooms and a nice atmosphere. there are tents with people camping in the yard. in the kitchen there is a crazy old stove that provides heat for the whole house.
we walked to the shore, which is the strait of magellan, so that we could stick our hands in and take photos. we are a bit disappointed that we can't enter the port to look at the big ships.we book a boat to the penguin island, isla magdalena, for the next day. and we have already noticed that there are germans everywhere here!
in the evening they fire up the grill at the hostel and make anticuchos (shish kebab) but i go to bed early. at the hostel there is this crazy polish guy who is planning on kayaking by himself to ushaia, through the magellan strait. he plans to do the trip in 3 months. previously, he hiked alone in the torres del paine national park in winter, during which most of the park is closed because impassable. he also hiked across the campo de hielo del sur (the third-largest ice field in the world after the arctic and antarctica) on skis, parts of which have never been visited by humans before because there is no reason to go there. his tent and his food as well as he himself were blown away in 200 km winds, but he continued hiking without food for 3 more days.
there was also a 48-year-old american lady with a bike that folds up and comes apart and fits in its own suitcase. when you are using the bike, the suitcase becomes a trailer for your luggage.
the next morning we got a van at 6:50, to get a boat to the isla magdalena, the penguin reserve. there we walked around the island for an hour, taking pictures of thousands of penguins. back on the boat, we were served coffee with a shot of pisco, and then we went to Isla Marta, where we saw a bunch of sea lions and cormorants from afar. there were huge waves on the way back, the boat was slamming up and down and a few people got sick. it was like an amusement park ride.
here are the photos from punta arenas:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#34.0

and here are the photos from isla magdalena, way more fotos of penguins than are really necessary:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#35.0

once some american lived on the island for a year as a thesis project to do a complete census of the population and counted almost 200,000.

oh, and the internet at the hogar is broken. the transformer for the router burned out or something. i am sitting in the mall next to a giant plastic christmas tree. they are playing "winter wonderland" and people are walking around in tee shirts and sandals.