(soothing guitar music)
- [Pablo] Patagonia is the place where you can see
how was the planet before human beings.
(soothing guitar music)
You can drive for hours and you won't see a person or a car.
- There is no place to hide here.
There are no trees, there is emptiness.
I believe that people will love this or not at all.
There is nobody in the middle point.
It's for some kind of souls only. (laughs)
(soothing guitar music)
- My name is Pablo Garcia Borboroglu
but it is so complicated to pronounce
that my nickname is Popi,
so everybody knows me like Popi.
I'm a researcher and a conservationist and I work
on seabirds but I'm specialized on penguins.
(penguins braying)
I founded and I direct the Global Penguin Society
which is an international organization that protects
all the species of penguins in the world.
- They're such a silly creature.
I just like how they waddle and land,
and then are so graceful in the water.
- You cannot appreciate them in a zoo nearly as much
as you can here in the wild.
There may come a time that if we don't do something
about this and protect these species
that it won't be there for our children.
- A penguin is important in my view because they are
excellent indicators of the health of the ocean.
Penguins can swim in very long distances in the ocean
to get food, so they need large-scale conservation.
But at the same time they need protection in the nest
because they spend lots of months breeding their chicks.
And the key thing is that when we protect penguins,
we are protecting the oceans.
The oceans are critical for human beings and for the planet
so we help the ocean to be stable and to be healthy
and benefit not only wildlife but also people.
So now we're gonna look for a penguin, and I think we have
a good candidate here.
We are going to weigh him, so we want to know
how well he's doing.
Five kilograms.
Fat and happy.
And then we're going to band him with a stainless steel band
to check if he's coming back to the same nest --
thank you, bye bye --
how many chicks he's going to have,
so it's like a CIA, more or less. (laughs)
So that was it.
Complete success!
(atmospheric guitar music)
My grandmother was the first person that ever told me
about something called a penguin.
When I was small, two or three years old, she used to
tell me these stories about penguins because she used to go
with horses and wagons to the coast to visit the penguins.
Then, the first time I visited a penguin colony
and I was surrounded by almost half a million penguins
I knew that protecting penguins was the mission of my life.
In the eighties in this province, 40,000 penguins died
per year, and there were many threats that they were facing
because there were reckless people and careless fisherman
that were coming here and the place was full of garbage
and they would come with their pets
that were harming the penguins.
We needed to close the gate because that was the only way
to make the penguins come back.
Of course it was difficult to convince those fisherman
to stop doing those activities.
They'd say, "Hey! Who are you to forbid me this!
"I've been coming here for ages with my grandfather."
So they would put the glue on the lockers of the gates.
They would come with guns, or they would complain legally.
So we started to work with the communities
and we started to help develop eco-touristic activity here.
- The house was built in 1920.
The first owner, he bought this house in Europe
and put it into the ship and built it here.
I'm Silvina, Silvina Zonio.
I'm part of the owners of this hotel.
I think it's something completely different
from other things.
When they arrive they say, "Wow!
"What is this house doing in the middle of nothing?"
It's really nice to share this little part of Patagonia.
For us, it's not just a real estate project.
It's more, it has a soul, this house.
- Today we walked down to the penguins which were
on the pathway that was down to the beach,
and it was really fun to watch them
in their natural environment.
- For me all El Pedral is so special.
The house, the hotel, it's so nice,
nice and quiet and relax,
and the people come here is so special.
I don't know why, but is not for all the people.
- People are living out of this operation.
Bus drivers, cook, tour guides, for example.
But people that want to enjoy the penguins
can come and enjoy the penguins.
They generate jobs for local people and penguins are happy.
(spanish guitar music)
- I think it's really important to feel a connection
with nature and not traveling with a group of tourists.
- My name is Jonathan Shylette and this is Susan Willis
and we're from Seattle, Washington, the United States.
We went on a hike, and we started out in what looked like
desert, and we headed into a canyon which was obviously
where the water runoff is, which was interesting
coz it had carved beautiful patterns in the walls.
- [Susan] And then when we walked up and out overlooking
the water, you can see the whole coastline here.
- [Jonathan] The vastness and the expanse, we were
the only humans and you're looking out upon the world.
- [Susan] I really believe sustainable tourism
is crucial to sustaining the nature and the beauty
and not overdeveloping it.
- We are very grateful to Footprints Network and partners
like World Nomads for their support because
that contribution is what makes us secure their future.
Since we were able to protect the colony,
the colony grew from six to 70 pairs to 190,
and now the colony is almost 1,800 pairs.
I never thought I was going to witness
the start of a new colony.
I thought that was something that would happen
once every 1,000 years, really.
So to have this opportunity in my lifetime is amazing.
We have been able to do things that will stay
even after we die, and that is going to benefit all the next
generations, so this is something that's making us
very proud of what we do.
(gentle inspirational music)