We were awoken at 4:15am by a call from reception to say our driver had arrived to take us to the airport… our pick-up time was 7am, so I said thanks but no thanks, our pick up wasn’t until 7. A couple of minutes later we had another call saying sorry we were correct. The other two couples were leaving at 4:15 for their return flights home.

Now wide awake we decided to very slowly get ready and have a quick breakfast. Our original itinerary was to take the ferry across to Tierra del Fuego, but the ferry schedule had been amended and there would be no ferries today. Instead, Naturetrek had arranged for us to fly over to Porvenir. This meant we had to significantly reduce the amount of luggage we could take across as were only allowed 10kg each (all our bags). We were going to leave our laptop behind, but over breakfast I read some reviews for the hotel which mentioned items had been stolen out of people’s bags left in storage, so we changed our minds and took it with us instead.

As it was it wasn’t a problem, our bags weren’t weighed as we checked into our flight with our guide for the next two days, Bastian. Our little plane took off at 8:15am for our 12 minute flight to Porvenir. Our driver and Hosteria manager, David, collected us from the airport and took us to Yendegaia Hosteria so we could drop off our bags, collect our lunch packs and order our dinner.

It would be approximately a 2 hour drive to the king penguin colony so we set off just after 9am. We arrived just a couple of minutes before the gate was unlocked and by the time we had our gear out of the car we could go in. The colony is located on private land and you can’t see the penguins from the road, so you have no choice but to pay the entrance fee. Later in the day it can get very busy so we were fortunate to only share the viewing area with three students doing research work with their teacher.

Viewing was done from behind a screen. This helps reduce the chances of disturbing the colony. It was good to see that the land owners were protecting the welfare of this special colony, the only one on the mainland of South America. We watched them waddle and screech for about an hour and then had our packed lunch on the picnic tables at the visitor centre.

We had the rest of the day to do as we wished and we agreed to head to a forest area to see if we could spot any birds. Tierra del Fuego like other areas of Patagonia had suffered from the introduction of non-endemic species and you could see evidence of where beaver dams had caused flooding and killed trees on the estancia lands. From 50 pairs, there are now a hundred thousand beavers! Muskrats and mink have also been introduced from populations once kept for fur trading.

David & Bastian drove us onto an estancia where there was a forest and stopped briefly to speak to a gaucho to find out what wildlife had been seen recently in the area. The gaucho’s name was Tordo (thrush) he was wearing interesting looking chaps so we asked what they were made out and he said they were goats that had drunk his water!

We went for our walk through the forest where we had our first encounter with the island’s guanaco. These like the beaver had been introduced to the island and with no puma to keep them in check they were everywhere. Humans had clearly become these guanaco’s predator and when they saw us they screamed warning calls to one another in the same way the Torres del Paine guanaco’s did when they saw pumas!

We got back to the hosteria at 7:30pm and we had time to freshen up before a nice dinner in town with Bastian.

We had decided we wouldn’t go back to the penguin colony so we had all day before we had to be at the ferry point to return to Punta Arenas. We had a very slow start and breakfast before meeting up with Bastian & David at 10am.

We went northwards to see some Chilean flamingo, they were very shy so we had to walk towards them very slowly and even then they took flight when they felt we had gotten close enough.

Our next sighting was some muskrat on a pond. The boys climbed a fence and walked out to the pond to get closer to them and a Chilean hawk that had caught a bird.

Next onwards to the highlight of the day to see a pair of Magellanic Horned Owls. They put on quite a display for us flying across us. We were helped by one of the estancia owner’s dogs as it ran around and barked making the owl open its sleepy eyes for us!

We got back to Porvenir late afternoon, so we could have a meal before our return on the ferry. Check-in for the ferry was at 6pm and we waited on board until 7pm when it was scheduled to leave. It was quite busy due to the previous day’s ferry having been cancelled. We arrived back in Punta Arenas 9pm and were transferred back to the hotel.

We were pleased to be reunited with our luggage and after getting our gear ready for our whale watching trip we retired to bed at 11pm.