The Great White Continent

23rd January 2016 Part 3
For the last part of Plan B we navigated the through Paradise Harbour to landed at a Chilean research station called Videla. The people living at the station live there for a year, even throughout winter. They made us very welcome and we were able to look around their house where we had a drink and biscuits. There's a museum and a gift shop and you can post post cards from the gift shop.
The station is surrounded by a very large number of, yes you guessed it, Gentoo penguins. There was also two female Elephant Seal haled out on the rocks. They are huge animals and I can't imagine how big the males are. Like other places we have visited some of the penguins were sitting on eggs and others had chicks. Since there are no trees and hence no sticks they build the nests out of little stones. These stones are closely guarded, but you see neighbours trying to steal stones off each other. The station had a free WiFi that I was able to connect to. I tried to send a Facebook message and then Twitter message but I don't think they worked. I guess the WiFi is good for the dozen or so people that live there, but when 85 other people turn up tying to use it it grinds to a halt. There was no password for the WiFi, but then who is going to steal it out here? Pingu may be. Post trip note - to my surprise when I was able to log onto the internet the post had worked including the photo.
Oh there is one important thing I forgot to mention. Up to now all our landings have been on islands, but Videla is actually on the Great White Continent itself! In theory you could walk to the South pole from here.