I woke from the sound of liquid sprayed on my tent. I actually don’t know what it was and can only guess some kind of animal was pissing on my tent. I got up to clean up the mess and luckily it didn’t stink.

Breakfast was a real treat. Today’s cook group prepared scrambled eggs with cheese and tomatoes. There were also some peaches left from yesterday’s breakfast which I enjoyed very much.

We started driving at 8am and arrived in Camarones around 3pm. I used the time to kick off studying Spanish. Since I will spent a bit more than four months of this year in Spanish speaking countries I thought I make the effort and learn a bit of Spanish in order to be able to have some basic conversations with the locals. Back home I purchased a Spanish course consisting of three books and six CDs which I digitalized so I can play them on my iPod. And today was the day I actually had my first Spanish lesson.

The main attractions of the area of Camarones, our home for tonight, are the nesting sites for large colonies of Magellanic penguins. Between September and April each year the penguins come to this area to incubate their eggs which we wanted to observe.

Since we were supposed to arrive earlier than we actually did our guide wasn’t waiting for us at the agreed spot. We figured out she had gone home already and drove to her house to pick her up. When driving towards the penguin spot, which lies 28km outside of Camarones, we quickly discovered we can’t go there because the road was too muddy and slippery and the likelihood we get stuck is very high. Our guide warned us by saying once we get stuck there is absolutely no way somebody pulling us out here and so we had to return. She also said in case it doesn’t rain until tomorrow morning and there is a strong wind the road will try out and we can go tomorrow. But unfortunately it rained all afternoon and evening so we decided not to try again and instead continue to travel very early tomorrow morning.

Since there isn’t anything else to do we spent the rest of the day hanging around the campsite. Juri, our fellow traveler from Japan, and her cook group prepared a very delicious Japanese dish for us consisting of rice, ground meat, spinach and an interesting combination of spices.