Penguinos!

Ok, so truth be told, the real reason we wanted to go to Ushuaia was to see the penguins.  And, as it just so happens, in the end of November, they form a colony on a certain privately owned island just down the road from Ushuaia (they form several colonies, actually, but most are in national parks or nature preserves).  Many tour companies will take guests near the penguin island, but only one promises to actually land on the island.  That's the one we wanted.

I'm on a boat!

The day was a long one for Anne, Hbomb, Mark and O'Canada as they started with a 2 hour bus ride, followed by a boat trip out to the island.  Once on the island, they found an unoccupied stretch of beach and landed.  From there, the guides directed them how to approach the penguins, how to get close - but not too close - and how to walk around without crushing any of their underground burrows.

As expected, the penguins were adorable.  Some of them frolicked on the beach, sunning themselves, jumping in the water to go fishing or play around, and then returning to the beach for continued sunbathing.  We were told that that these care-free beach bums were mostly the single males, wandering through this mating season with little to no responsibility and just living it up....I'm sure you know the type.

What are you looking at?

Further inland, the penguin families arranged themselves into little neighborhoods.  Apparently, they come back not only to the same island every year, but to the same little part of the island and do their nesting in close proximity to the same families each year.  These particular penguins, called Magellanic penguins, mate with the same partner year after year.  Typically, the male gets to the nesting grounds first and claims his borrow (typically the same one year after year, but always in the same general area) and then waits around for the female to show up.

Hey, baby, come here often?

The little neighborhoods had a series of borrows in the ground.  The penguins hatch their eggs on the island and then the babies grow, using the borrows and their parents for protection, until they are big enough to go out and fend for themselves.

As opposed to the free-wheeling single male penguins goofing around on the beach, the adult/parent penguins work nearly 24/7 in shifts.  One parent sits on the egg while the other parent goes fishing.  When the egg hatches, they need to have a good store of calories ready for junior.  Then, after breeding season is done, they head back to the waters on the Atlantic side of South America.

One unique aspect that our group encountered was the fat little guy shown above (that's the photo ABOVE, not the fat guy holding HBomb in the photo BELOW).  The orange markings on his face mark this as a King penguin.  Apparently, he was either on his way to his own nesting neighborhood and stopped off for a rest or had decided that he was looking to start a new nesting ground and was checking out the island of the Magellanic penguins.