The return of the penguins…
(but different ones)
In my last blog (in French 🇫🇷) I wrote about penguins, king penguins. If you didn’t know go and read it, now (no pressure 😰).
Well now, as you might have guessed from the title of my article, I will be talking about penguins, again 😬. But do not worry these penguins are different (at least a bit), so you will not be bored out of your mind for the next few minutes. ⏱
So, as I was saying, these penguins are much smaller than the king penguins (well duh they’re the kings 🙄) and are called the Magellanic penguins. We went to see a whole colony of them. If you're wondering how big a colony can be, it can go from just a few little penguins to 250 thousand penguins 😮. Yeah, I know.
For our last day in Patagonia, after watching whales in Peninsula Valdes (see Eleonore’s blog) we went to a place called Punta Tombo. It was a bit of a long drive but we survived, luckily. Over there is the largest Magellanic penguin colony in the world and if you had payed attention you would know that it is, 250 thousand! (you didn’t even remember me saying that did you? 😅😬)
When we arrived, we saw a few guanacos and stopped but quickly left again. (If you were thinking that we left hurriedly because we were so excited about these little creatures hogging the beach 😒 well I am sorry to say that you are wrong 🙅🏽♀️our time was limited as we had a plane ✈️ to catch in the afternoon so couldn't stay too long)
At first, we didn’t see that many penguins, just a few waddling about, minding their own business but as we walked further and further towards the beach more and more were settled into their nests, enjoying the morning⛅️ and the gentle breeze. And then, something amazing happened, drumroll please 🥁…. we saw a new born baby!!! And no not a human, a penguin chick 🙄. Also (SPOILER ALERT!!!😱) we saw quite a few other babies as we were just at the right season to see babies.
In case you faithful readers were wondering, I thought that these penguins were not scared of us and quite used to tourists being quite close to them, taking pictures and videos of them. In my opinion they knew quite well they were protected. (I mean who could even try and hurt these cute 🥺 bundles of soft smooth feathers?)
I can even prove it: these animals are so fearless that one even went right up to my brother, Raphaël to bite his shoe, I have it all on camera 🤳🏼⬇️
At one point we came across a short cut to the beach and it was so similar to a zebra crossing 🚸 in London! A few penguins waited while the others crossed 😜then the ones who had been waiting went, others arrived and so on, it was very funny to watch.
When we arrived at the viewpoint of the beach (after literally 200 photos 🙄) I was quite shocked. After the hundreds of penguins we had seen on the way I thought that only a few would be there dozing on the beach, but no. loads and loads of them were there and every minute more and more came. about 15 were swimming around in the water looking as happy as could be. No chicks could be seen as their feathers were not waterproof yet so they could not go into the water yet.
I could have stayed there for a few hours more just watching them, living their own lives but we had to go and catch the plane back to BA so we sadly 😢 had to go. I loved these few hours of discovering the life of these funny creatures, and totally recommend it!!
I hope you have enjoyed my article. The next one will be next year. See you in 2020!
Apolline 💜💜
