The Peace Crane

To start, Patagonia was unbelievable, there will be plenty of blog posts about our journey through the “w” of Torres Del Paine, but I wanted to begin with our odyssey, out epic trip to the Penguin Island, and I may not even get to the penguins…

First off I was completely thrilled that we even were able to go to Isla Magdalena that I forgot how sea sick I get on tiny boats. I boarded anyway and we took off. Here is a picture of the inside of the boat.

inside the boat

You may not be able to see but there is a little door on the ceiling on the front  of the boat, half way to the island (across the Magellan Straight!!) they open the door up and you can stick your head, or half your body, out if you want to feel the ocean breeze and check out the waves. There was a group of Japanese tourists, who were sitting near the door so they were able to try it out first. After fifteen minutes I really wanted to do it so I asked the German couple in front of me if they were going, they said no. I stood up to make the wobbled journey to the front when two Japanese tourists jumped back up the hole. Literally two seconds after I sat back down a huge wave came over the boat and completely drenched the two.

When I say “drench” I am mean it in its purest definition form, head to toe, sopping wet, so wet that when you walk around your shoes squeeze out water and it makes that funny squishy sound. Everyone in the boat gasped everyone but me who could not stop laughing. I know it’s horrible; I tried to silence myself by putting my head in Andrew’s armpit and trying to breathe. It was like being on a water ride, one where you go through a waterfall. It looked like the water came down in a solid form the shape of the door. After I calmed down I felt really bad about how hard and how long I laughed. I don’t know if you know this but being that close to Antarctica makes the climate very cold. They were going to have to walk around a freezing windy island completely soaked. So I decided to make up for my laughing and show that I am not the worst human being ever by giving the girl (the guy was too big) my fleece I had on under my rain coat which she happily accepted.

So we landed on the island and walked around to see some Penguins:

 

Windy and sunny

On the way back we circled around another island full of Sea Lions, I got up to check them out but the boat was rocking so bad I knew I was going to be sick, I just sat down and focused on the horizon. I started to hear some disturbing things like “do you have a bag”, “GET ME THE BAG! GET ME THE BAG!!”. One girl behind me and one girl to my right simultaneously started to throw up. I covered my ears and kept looking at the horizon, my mouth started to dry up, but I was able to hold everything back, but I was unable to see the Sea Lions. A few minutes later Andrew emerged from the back deck and said everyone out there had been throwing up, it was an awful 45 minutes back to Punta Arenas.

Only shot I took, and the only good look I got, which is sad because I love Sea Lions

Once we reached dry land the young Japanese girl came up to me with my jacket and couldn’t stop Thanking me, she kept bowing and saying “arigato” I kept saying “you’re welcome” (she spoke English) and she kept saying “arigato” this went on for a few seconds, which was a neat experience in of itself. We had to take a bus back to the tour agency and when we arrived she came back up to me and handed me a little origami crane and said one last “arigato”. We spoke to her for a few minutes, she was currently on a 3 month cruise aboard a ship named “Peace Boat”, we had seen this in the Bay and were curious, did they donate the proceeds to Peace organizations or was it just a huge advertisement for Peace, when we asked her why it was called the “Peace Boat” she responded “because we like Peace”. It was so sweet, I decided to name my origami The Peace Crane. 

Peace Crane