Punta Arenas and New Year's Eve!

We woke up very early on New Years Eve day headed to Punta Arenas, Chile. Punta Arenas would be our southernmost point on the trip.  Our intentions on getting to Punta Arenas early was to arrange a penguin tour, which is one of the main tourist attractions of this town.  We had had little success in trying to arrange this from afar, so hoped that once we got in town, it would be a little easier.

Because of the timing, and because everything is shut down on New Year's Day, we wouldn't be able to go on the main boat tour to Magdalena Island where thousands of penguins live.  Since Kate and Kate were leaving and we all just REALLY wanted to see some penguins, we arranged to go check out a smaller penguin colony nearby.

While there weren't many penguins, the weather cleared up and we enjoyed the beautiful scenery and the "poco" penguins we did see.  These penguins are called Magellanic penguins and migrate to southern Patagonia during the summer for mating and nesting.

Since Scott and I were staying an extra day, we were able to go on the boat tour to Magdalena, so there will be more penguin pictures to come! 

For New Year's Eve, the four of us decided to embrace some of the local traditions.  One involves wearing yellow....undergarments. Apparently, this signifies good luck in the upcoming year.  We also purchased some decorative bundles of wheat, which people put on their tables to hope for abundance in the upcoming year. 

We had a delicious dinner at a local hotel restaurant (because everything else was closed) and had lovely conversation listing our personal highlights of 2014.  After dinner, we headed to the waterfront, where the townspeople were getting ready for the midnight celebration.  It was a pretty weird New Years Eve for us because the sun actually didn't set until around 11pm!  

Local students playing drums for New Years celebration.

Our hotel was located on a hill with a great rooftop view of the waterfront, so we watched the fireworks and heard the church bells ring at midnight.  It was a very memorable New Years Eve. We had such an amazing 2014, and were so happy to be ringing in another year with family and friends! 

Happy 2015!  ( a little blurry, but we didn't have any other pics!)