How many people can go see penguins in their natural habitat after a morning’s work? Probably not too many, but today we were one of the lucky few. Yesterday, we flew from Mexico to Punta Arenas, Chile. Chile claims that Punta Arenas is the southern-most city in the world, although Argentina claims Ushuaia is. On the map, Ushuaia definitely looks further south, but Chileans say it’s too small to be considered a real city. Regardless of the veracity of either claim, it’s definitely a great place to be and there is a lot to do and see around here.

Our first penguin of the day

The penguin colony we visited is called the Seno Otway Reserve and at this time of year, most of the penguins have grown up and left, and the only penguins left are those that hatched late, took a while to grow up, or possibly couples whose egg never hatched and they’re still waiting. All of these penguins are Magellanic Penguins and live for 25-30 years.

Watching each other’s back

Grace on a watch tower overlooking penguins in the background 

 

Penguins coming back from a fishing trip

Molting penguin

This young penguin seems to be molting a bit late in the season as most penguins have already gone out to sea.

That’s not a penguin - it’s a ñandú

The ñandú looks a bit like an ostrich or emu, but is only found in certain parts of South America, including Patagonia (South of Chile where we are now). This one was looking for some food at the Seno Otway penguin colony.

p.s. During our time in Mexico, we were so busy that we rarely had time to write about what we were doing and seeing as every moment on the computer was spent working. We still have a lot of footage to show of many of the interesting places we visited and we’ll put it up later on.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 11:28 am and is filed under Patagonia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.