Walking with Pingüinos

January 2010 - Patagonia & Tierra del Fuego.

Our first sighting of penguins in the wild is on the Galapagos; these are quite small. We will encounter many more in Tierra del Fuego and southern Patagonia. Tiny Isla Magdalena near Punta Arenas for example is inhabited by 80,000 pairs of Magellanic penguins. Only one human lives on the island: the guardaparque (park warden).

A few penguin facts:

• Penguins only live in the southern hemisphere
• Even though penguins are birds they cannot fly - if you see one fly, it is most likely a comorant, a hallucination, or a miracle
• Couples stays together live long, only breeding difficulties are reason for separation
• Magellanic penguins migrate once a year all the way from southern Brazil down to Tierra del Fuego, where they come to breed
• They use the same nest (a hole in the ground) every year
• Each pair breeds two young penguins. Due to their fluffy feathers, the babies look bigger than their parents
• The males and females share all the parenting work such as sitting on the eggs and feeding the babies
• They gather food in an area up to 600 km off the coast. After gathering food, they walk back to their nest which can be a few kilometres land inwards. So if you think you live far away from the supermarket, think again
• They swim incredibly fast: up to 45 km/h - faster than many cruiseships or ferries.
• Penguins may walk funny but they go at about the same speed as humans
• There are 17 species of penguins in the world
  
  

We see hundreds if not thousands of Magellanic penguins (the most common specie in Tierra del Fuego and southern Patagonia). They are not shy of the visiting humans at all and just go about there business as the gawking tourists stare at them and click away. Some are even very curious and walk towards the tourists.

A very bumpy one hour journey in a Zodiac brings us to Isla Pingüino (off the coast of Puerto Deseado) where we visit a colony of 700 pairs of the much less common Rockhopper penguins. As their name suggests, they hop very skillfully from rock to rock, when walking on land. They also have funky hairdos and make up: bright red eyes with bright yellow eyebrows and two bright yellow head feathers - Natasha thought they were called punk rock penguins.

Along the coast of Puerto Deseado, we very unexpectedly spot yet another type of penguin: the much larger King penguin. This specie lives in the Antarctic and on the Islas Malvinas (or the Falkland Islands as the British call them), about 500 km away from where we are. This penguin should not be on the South American continent, and yet we see one single one on the shore, just standing there looking at the much smaller busy Magellanic penguins. Natasha thinks he's not real and been put there by our tour operator. This guy either got seriously lost looking for fish, or is a visiting tourist - just like us.

Pingüinos