We were still half an hour out at sea when I spotted the first one. I thought it was a sea bird until it dived, then it's sheer speed and agility through the water gave it away, re-surfacing like a bullet along the top of the water. This was my first sighting outside a zoo of one of the most abundant residents in this part of the world - a penguin.

On land of course, they look very different. As the boat drew up close to Isla Magdelena, the sight of 60,000 of them waddling over almost every inch of ground was surreal. I felt like Gulliver discovering a land of funny little people. Taking little notice of us as we walked amongst them up to the lighthouse, they mainly walked around in pairs; or the parents tended to stay at home with mum lying in her burrow hiding the young chicks behind her, still too young to venture outside, and dad standing on guard at the doorway. Obviously some were out for an evening of fishing.

We got a very lucky window in the weather for the trip to the penguin colony. It was a beautiful evening. Otherwise the three days and nights I spent in Punta Arenas were gloomy and very, very cold, but made bearable by some good company and cheap red wine. This is Chile's last major town or city. Interestingly there is a monument about 40km south of here which marks the geographical centre of the country. Both Chile and Argentina like to show their Antarctic territories on maps, which makes Chile's official geography very unique, stretching from the South Pole to the tropics, but never much wider than 200km. Just a long sliver of mountains, ice, fjords, coastline and desert.