End of the year, End of the world.

Some may think life slows down once you are eligible for AARP discounts and the highlight of your day is posting your WORDLE score. But this last year? It was insane. I survived (not necessarily in this order) moving from China to Peru, even though my boxes didn’t arrive until six months later, a concussion, a torn ACL, and the trials of getting a Peruvian resident card. Plus, I sold my condo in Chicago, updated two teaching certificates, learned how to use the copy machine at school (trust me, this stuff isn’t easy), and am on a mission to try every one of the four thousand potatoes grown in this country. So in August, with only three months left of this mayhem packed years, , I promised myself if I made it to the end of the year, I would visit the end of the earth to watch the penguins do nothing.

Why Penguins? They are content with doing nothing. They can just stand for hours, not checking their cell phones, worrying about prescriptions transferring from a Thai doctor in Bangkok to a Spanish speaking doctor in Lima, or worry about things that never happen. A few of them will splash in water with their friends or roll around taking a penguin bath. But for the most part, they just stand, including this group of gentoo penguins in their mosh pit, who continue to stand there after the tourists stop snapping their photos.

Truth be told, I do enjoy being busy. I like having plans, places to go, and goals to reach. But there is a lesson to learn from this simple black and white creature.

How to see the penguins in Ushuaia? There are several boat tours through Beagle Canal (the canal named after a British ship; the British ship named after the queen’s dog). I recommend taking the penguin tour before visiting the Museum of shipwrecks. According to Mancel, a local cab driver, there have been over three hundred wrecks in this area (cab drivers are a more reliable news source than the internet).

Cruise ships take off from Ushaia to head to the South Pole, and they should be renamed cruise towns, or the Inferno, in reference to the seven layers of Dante’s hell. While this Nat Geo cruise ship is a normal size, these cruise towns holds three thousand guests. That doesn’t seem like fun . You’d be spending your holiday standing in line doing nothing…like a penguin.

There are other birds to see in Ushaia that are busier than the penguin. This Patagonian Sierra Finch and Rufous-collared sparrow would peck around snacking hikers for cookie crumbs.

So I made it to the end of the year and the end of the world, where I hopefully learned a lesson from the penguins on how to dive into 2025.