Los Dinos Visitan Los Penguinos! (The Dinos visit the Penguins, for those who no habla Español)

We are in Chile! First we started with two nights in Santiago, which we found to be a refreshing city for us to relax in . We are loving being in South America, it is giving us a chance to practice Español! We got to explore some of the city. We visited one of the oldest Catholic Church´s (San Francisco), the Public Library, Santa Lucia park/overlook, as well as an Antiochian Orthodox Church. The secretary took us into the church, giving us some history and telling us about the parish. It was really neat to see the iconography in Spanish! It was great to explore the city, and really neat to see how clean it is. The Andes mountains are in the background and almost give a Colorado Rockies & Denver type feel to the city. These mountains tower well over 6000 meters (around 20,000 feet).

We are now in Punta Arenas, basically the bottom of Chile and South America. It is verrry cold here, but we are staying at a lovely , cozy hostel with warm fires and blankets! We spent the day exploring the city of Punta Arenas, which is a cute little port city (reminds Dean of an Alaska). This afternoon, we went on a tour to the Seno-Otway Penguin Reserve where we saw hundreds of Magellanic Penguins. The colony there has roughly 10,000 resident penguins that spend September to March there, breeding, then raising their young. It was so cool to see them emerging from the water after a long day of fishing. Others were around, resting in their burrows, probably staying out of the wind which often pushes 50+ mph (though today it was only 30-40).

Well, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We will definitely be missing our families. We´re taking a bus in the morning to Puerto Natales (3 hrs) north, which is the gateway to Torres del Paine National Park. The hostel there is owned by Americans so therefore will be having a Thanksgiving feast! We are very excited!!! We wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and we´ll post again after we get off the trail in the NP!