Sea Lions, Sea Otters and Elephant Seals Oh My!

So this weekend was really really fun. I got to meet a lot of Nora´s new friends in La Serena which was great. Then, on Saturday we took a day trip to a place called Isla Damas which is an hours north of La Serena. We visited three islands in total by boat. The first two though we just toured around because it´s a national park and so they don´t let you walk on two of the islands and then on the third you can only be there for an hour.
So the day started out with a bus coming to pick me and Nora up at my hostal. Then we drove around town and picked up a few more tourists. Then we had a two hour drive north and west to the coast. From there we spent a hald hour on a boat getting to the islands. Our boat had roughly 12 tourists, one guide, and two people in charge of the boat. We spent about four or five hours on the water just traveling around looking for different wildlife. In that time we saw hundreds of penguins. The kind we saw were Magellanic penguins and they were very cute. In total there are 17 different types of peguins in the world and they all live south of the equator. We also saw four different types of pelicans which are very cool birds- I might need to add them to my list of favorite animals. Then we saw an elephant seal which I really wasn´´t expecting but it was even bigger than I thought they were. They are huge and really vicious and I´m pretty sure when the males fight it´s to the death. When it comes to their food thought they cover themselves in sand and then wait for a little penguin to waddle by and they quickly snap and eat it. Quite a good idea if you ask me.

Additionally we saw a sea otter, 50 or so dolphins swimming and jumping (better than sea world). And a big group of sea lions sunning themselves on the rock. The islands are all rocky and really incredible shapes but unfortunately they are all covered in white bird shit so they´re not that breathtaking.

I have to run now- tonight I´m going to stay up late and go to an observatory to see the stars. I can´t wait!

¡Hasta luego!