27 Feb: Puerto Natales (CHI) --> Santiago (CHI).

As Marc mentioned yesterday, the group had a vote on whether or not we were going to see the Magellenic penguins. The reason for the debate is that we wouldn't be arriving at the sanctuary until late morning and in most cases, penguins are already out at sea for the day to eat, swim, etc.

The location on the Otway Sound was beautiful and we managed to see 3 penguins out of the 20,000 or so that live in the colony. So hey, it wasn't a total loss. After that, we headed to the airport to say goodbye to our Patagonia guide, Muti, and fly up north to Santiago with our group.

The flight was uneventful and I finished off another book "Blood, Bones & Butter" by Gabrielle Hamilton. She is the owner and the chef of Prune, a highly regarded restaurant in New York. It was a fun and a quick read, and it was about her unconventional path to becoming a chef.

We landed, met our contact in Santiago and then said goodbye to our group of travellers. They were all flying back to the States within the next 24 hours and Marc and I are next heading to Mendoza. We plan on tasting more Malbec in the next 3.5 days than we ever had in our lives. It's good to be goal oriented, right?

Marc and I had about 25 minutes from checking in to the hotel to having to catch a taxi to our dinner location for 9pm. We kind of packed in advance in Puerto Natales so we were able to get cleaned up and make it to Borago for dinner with a couple of minutes to spare. Score.

Dinner was pretty interesting.... in a good way. All of the ingredients were from Chile and it was a 12-course meal of small bites. Borago also has a small garden in the back of the restaurant, where they grow a number of the ingredients that they serve at dinner. I had a local mushroom that I never tasted before, so I was happy.

We had a local Chilean Syrah, which we enjoyed. It was more old world style than new world. Our table had an open view of the kitchen, which was fun because of elaborate prep put in for each dish.

But since we had such an early start this morning and dinner was many courses, we were dragging by the time the 9th course came out. The staff perceptively picked up on the fact that we wer pretty tired, so they "moved dessert along". I think we finally made it back to the hotel at 12:45am, which will make that 6:15am wake-up call tomorrow really interesting.