Up early this morning so we could get to the office of thetourism operatorby 6:50am ready for our tour to Magdalena island.

They put us allintotwo minibuses and drove us to30 minutes out of town to a small port where two large Zodiacs were waiting for us.

Weput on our life jackets and boarded the larger of the two boats -ours had seating for about 20 – with captain standing at the wheelat the rear (and getting very wet)and a first mate hanging on at the side and getting equally wet. The boat had a canvas roof to keep spray off us – which was good, since it was quite windy.

Once wegot out to more open water, the swell rose, eventually reaching over 2m … made it very interesting in the boat -quite a thrill ride … much more exciting than rides at the show or a theme park. We followed a zig-zag path (to avoid travelling side-on to the waves) out to Magdalena island and arrived after about 45 minutes.

We disembarked on the island amongst literally thousands of Magellanic Penguins, and followed a roped off trail up to a lighthouse at the top – past many nests and young Penguins who didn’t seem overly fussed by our presence.

There were a lotof Kelp Gulls and Skuas too hanging around and making lots of noise. Some of them had nests too – although I only saw juveniles, notchicks.

Apparentlythe penguin population is at least 50,000 birds, although some estimates we’ve heard put it at over three times that many.

After an hour of wandering amongst the penguins, we boarded our Zodiacs again and headed further out to Marta Island, where a colony of sea lions lived. We watched them for a while – quite a few young sea lions visible, plus a couple of cranky males.

We thenheaded back to shore, re-boarded the minibuses and were driven back to town, arrivingaround 11:30am.

Westopped for some lunch,and then walked up to alookout with views over the town and Straits of Magellan.

Took it easy for the rest of the day – watching TV and catching up with the blogs and emails.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch dvd

Ocean’s Eleven movie