>Ever been to El Cafate? Would love to visit there. So close to the penguins. :-)

I used to live in Rio Gallegos, a city "close" to El Calafate when I was a kid (I lived in Patagonia until I was 17, in all Atlantic provincial capitals, Rio Gallegos, Rawson (Trelew) and Viedma, so we went to Calafate frequently, and the Patagonian Andes are not unlike BC, but not penguins near Calafate thou :)

When living in Rio Gallegos we would often make a 150 km to Cabo Virgenes, the southern most tip of continental Argentina to drink some "mate" on Sundays, and there we were able to walk among Penguins (I think you cannot do that any longer)

Some 1000 km north of there, and some 100 south of Trelew, another place we used to visit in my childhood, you can find the largest colony of Magellanic Penguins in South America, a place called Punta Tombo so you need to add that place to your bucket list :)

>
>>(even when those ingrates never visit us! :) and is very expensive and time
>>consuming, so our local travels were limited to Okanagan, Sunshine Coast
>>and Vancouver Island.
>>Oh, did you catch the Northern lights? That is something I want to see....
>
>I did ... but they weren't very spectacular when I was up there (May 10-28, 2002). We saw something that looked like dim green only.

:( I guess you will need to go back some other time :)