20 - Where the Penguins Roam (Punta Arenas)

Ushuaia, ARGENTINA to Punta Arenas, CHILE - 31 december 2002

I had been warned by Carolyn and Lydia (who had visited me in Buenos Aires) that I ought to try and buy my bus-ticket out of Ushuaia as soon as I arrive as they were hard to come by.

For novelty, I had wanted to spend New Year’s Eve at the ‘end of the world’ but it was either a bus out of Ushuaia today or a bus out of Ushuaia many many days later. So, instead, I would be spending New Year’s Eve in Punta Arenas, Chile later this evening.

I got the last but one seat on the bus to Punta Arenas, next to the onboard toilet. My neighbour (who got the last seat) was an American but a more mature guy, i.e. he had grey hair and smoked a pipe.

Guess what, he had also just returned from a 10-day Antarctica cruise. OK, here I go again… rubbed shoulders one more time. And that was not all, he was going to Punta Arenas to fly to the Falkland Islands. Gee, Grey Piper was going places!

He then proceeded to ask me which countries I had ever been to in my LIFE. Er… I found this question awkward to answer. I hate being a lister. To rattle off the countries that I had been to in my life? That was so boring! Since this was what he asked, I guess I had to answer something. But I just knew that he was actually not interested in listening. So I replied sparingly.

Grey Piper selected some countries and zoomed in further. Which cities? This was beyond weird. As I gingerly made my replies again, he interrupted ever so often to say “Ah, I’ve been there, in ’76”, “Oh, been there, 12 years ago”, “Uh-huh, was there, summer of ’83”…

As this was a long, boring bus journey through bleak, desolate landscape, I shall interrupt to give my observations of the myriad travellers around that make up this weird and wonderful world.

The below are all true examples, I swear.


TYPE: THE WAITING-TO-EXHALE

Example 1

Someone: “How long did you travel?”
Guy: “I went to 26 countries in 21 months.”
Someone: “Wow… how much did you spend?”

The Guy actually proceeded to reply an amount, right up to the CENTS! It was like this guy had had all his answers prepared in his mind, just waiting… W-A-I-T-I-N-G for someone to ask him those questions.

Example 2

Then, there were those like Grey Piper who sought for the chance to interrupt and drop hints of where HE had been to, in the disguise that he was interested in knowing where YOU had been to. At the merest hint or flicker from your eyes or sometimes, even utterly unsolicited, he would proceed to extrapolate on his travels, furnishing you with details and anecdotes. He shoved everything down your throat the first 5 minutes of meeting you.


TYPE: THE ANYTHING-YOU-DID-I-DID-IT-BETTER

Example 1

The below conversation actually happened to me and I write it now, verbatim. Note that there was no pause between each question.

2 points – Win; 0 point – Lose; 1 point - Draw.

Guy: “Have you been to Jordan?”
Me: “Yes”
Score, Me vs Guy - 1 : 1

Guy: “Did you go to Petra?”
Me: “Er… Yes”
Score, Me vs Guy - 2 : 2

Guy: “How many days did you spend there?”
Me: “4 days”
Score, Me vs Guy - 3 : 3

(OK, if I was this TYPE of traveller, I would argue that the guy did not proffer HIS number of days spent in Petra, and hence we could not verify if this was indeed a DRAW situation. But since I was not this TYPE of traveller, I let it slide, haha.)

Guy: “Did you go to Wadi Rum?”
Me: “Wadi Rum? No…”
Guy, with a flourish: “I spent ONE NIGHT in the Wadi Rum desert under the stars.”
Score, Me vs Guy - 3 : 5

Stand back, we have a winner…

Example 2

Pablo and I were sitting behind a guy at the National Stadium of Ulaan Baator, watching the wrestling match during Naadam Festival. Guy turned around and started a conversation with Pablo. He finally asked, “So, how many days have you been in Mongolia?”

Pablo racked his brain, “Er… I think, 8…10 days?”
Guy: “For me, THREE months.”

With a flourish (this type usually ended with flourishes), he swung his bag and strode out of our lives. Pablo and I looked at each other, incredulous. Like, what J-U-S-T happened?


TYPE : THE LISTER or LIST-BUILDER

Example 1

Guy: “I just crossed the border to Argentina to visit the Iguaçu Falls. Does that mean I have entered my 31st country?… Yeah, I think it counts.”

This would also be someone like Regi who was planning on going to Antarctica because that was the last continent he had not set foot on. It was those who wanted to be able to say that they had been there, done that, to put a ‘tick’ against the country or continent.

Example 2

Then there are those who simply rattled off the countries they had been to, whether called for or not. They can sometimes be confused with the WAITING-TO-EXHALE but that specimen usually provided more details while this just go for IMPACT and love to bask in the awe-struck after-effect of the listener.


The bleak, desolate landscape of southern Patagonia continued in front of me. For the next few hours, I dozed and woke, read and stared out of the window.

Suddenly, out of the blue, Grey Piper proclaimed, “It would be great to be able to go to Spitzburgen.”

We were not talking about anything prior to this for hours. It was not a case of talking about the north, south, east or west of some places that triggered him to be reminded of Spitzburgen.

I knew he was saying this for IMPACT. He must have calculated that the listener had an 80% chance of not knowing where or what Spitzburgen was and that the listener would get all flustered and would implore, “Huh?? Spitzburgen?? Where’s that? What’s that? I don’t know this place.” And he would then proceed, with swollen ego, to enlighten the pitiful listener.

The above thought processed in my head in a few micro-seconds. He had also misjudged me to be one of the 80% statistic, for I knew where Spitzburgen was. I refused to grant him the pleasure.

“Spitzburgen? North of Norway? That’s an idea…” I smiled nonchalantly, unimpressed, and returned to the wonderfully bleak and desolate landscape of southern Patagonia.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire well-travelled people and love to hear their stories. But there are just some who… irk me.

We paused by the Magellanes Straits to await the vehicle-ferry to transport us across. The tortured Chilean flag fluttering nearby had been thoroughly abused, harshly blown. The flag now remained half the length of what it used to be, its ends totally in shreds.

I guess, this was how it was like in Southern Patagonia, always freakingly cold, rainy and windy. What a savage place to live in…

There were a few hostel touters at the bus-station when we arrived at Punta Arenas. I followed a guy named Caco back to his hostel. The hostel had four other guests, all Germans. Guess who was the odd one out?

Oh, I did not mind them speaking in German among themselves. For now, I still enjoy listening to another language other than English. It sounded beautifully harsh. Occasionally, one of them would do me the favour by translating what they were saying. The joke was usually lost by then.

A few minutes before midnight, the Germans, Kai, Udo, Thomas and Nadia, and I headed to the Plaza de Armas to look for a party. Amazingly, the entire town was dead. No lights shone through the houses we passed by. When we arrived at the Plaza, there were a few sparse groups loitering around. I counted about 15 of us, perhaps all tourists.

We all had different times on us. Someone quipped, “3 minutes left!” Others argued, “No, 1 minute!” In the end, when our ‘New Year celebrations’ began was dependent on when the corks of our respective champagne bottles popped out into the air. There were waves of ‘FELIZ AÑO NEUVO’ [Happy New Year] called out at different times.

We hopped up and down the square, trying to make as much noise as possible in this lifeless town. We all agreed this was the weirdest and most silent New Year ‘party’ we had had in a while. We hugged strangers, wished one another well, took swigs out of the cheap champagne. Then… the town clock struck ‘12’ and chimed away. Oops, we were a tad early. Alas, no fireworks either.

A party was held in one of the buildings facing the square and the merrily drunk people leaned out of the balcony and started throwing streamers down and waving at us to run up and join them. We did, only to be turned away by the waiters!

The tourists hung around the square and figured, well, we just had to move on, for NOTHING was happening down there. The Germans and I walked to another hostel. This was also quiet but it had more people in the hostel and there were music and food.

We invited ourselves in and the drunk and cheery lady-in-charge placed five bottles of wine on our table. We later furtively took their plates of leftover pear crumble and chocolate cake and scraped up everything with our fingers.

We talked and drank until 4:30am when the sky turned blue again. It had turned dark at 10:30pm last year, just 6 hours ago and now, ah… a brand new year begins…



Punta Arenas, CHILE - 01 january 2003

Punta Arenas looked wind-swept and desolate today as well. No cars passed by our hostel. No one walked by either.

I curled up on the sofa, and spent New Year’s Day reading a book by Argentina’s most intellectual writer Jorge Luis Borges - ‘Labyrinths’.

I realised, a little giddily, Borges and I share the same birthdate – 24 August. How lucky I am! But, I am the living proof that sharing the same birthdate has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with sharing similar intellectual levels.

I needed full concentration to read his book. I pored over it studiously, frequently re-reading certain paragraphs. All the stories revolved around somewhat magical themes that took you far away from reality and yet, seemingly and confusingly so dead-pan and real. Magical words like ‘infinity’, ‘cyclical’, ‘limitless’, ‘eternity’ and of course, ‘labyrinth’ featured prominently in all the stories.

There are many ways to travel and I had just been exposed to yet another way by Borges… travelling of the mind to magical places.


Punta Arenas, CHILE - 02 january 2003

I paid my visit to the Penguin’s Colony near Punta Arenas in the afternoon. As the tour van drove around to pick up tourists from their hotels, an American lady asked the driver, “Hay más personas para coger? [Are there more people to pick up?]” I looked up, nearly bursting into laughter. Er… in Latin America, that phrase would have meant: “Are there more people to f*#k?” Snickersnickersnicker…

It was about one and a half hour’s drive through more wind-swept plains, dotted with the occasional rheas (ostrich-like birds found in South America), to arrive at Seno Otway, some 70 or so km out of Punta Arenas.

The Magellanic Penguins returned to this site from October to March to breed and raise their babies. And January was the month to see the baby penguins.

We walked on boardwalks through the nature reserve. I hurried along as I figured the penguins would be near to the coast. Suddenly, I spied a penguin casually standing outside a burrow. Then, a few more steps took me merely one metre from two penguins, lying huddled together on the grass. I was totally amazed by how close we could be to them and yet, they did not seem to be spooked by us.

Near the coast, there were many families standing and lying outside their burrows. The babies were still in baby fur, but they looked as big as their parents. Some were cleaning their wings. Some appeared to be dozing. Others were just standing around, penguin-watching.

Groups of three or four were toddling their way up from or down to the coast. At the coast, which we could peer out from a hide, tonnes of them were standing around or plunging into the water. It was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!

The last time I saw penguins was in Krakow, Poland when the penguin-nuns flocked to Krakow to await the arrival of the Pope Mobile, back in August. So, this was an incredible experience for me. Penguins just crack me up. They look so cute and funny. I guess it was from all ‘The Far Side’ comics I had read.

Maybe the persistent wind blew and stretched the two ends of my mouth to the sides for I had a permanent grin fixated on my face for the rest of the walk around the reserve. I was freezing cold, blown senseless by the southern wind, but I guess I was more dizzy with the euphoric feeling of being present in such an extreme location to see a colony of penguins.