Posts Tagged ‘Penguin’

There were several options for a boat trip from Ushuaia (including Antarctica!) but we chose a tour to a penguin breeding colony and it was definitely the right choice.  Penguins are absolutely adorable, and not something you often get to see in the wild.  The tour promised us that we would be able to “walk within the penguins” and it was the only trip in town that has permission to take tourists to this penguin island.

Flag trees on the way to the penguins

We stopped at a couple of scenic spots along the way and after about an hour on gravel roads we arrived at a ranch.  Justin and I had thought that the ranch would have a tour that involved ranchy things, but we were wrong about this.  It was actually a marine museum and research station and we got a tour of all kinds of bones and even got to see a dolphin being dissected.  That was smelly!

Scientists hard at work

Ok, so that´s not a cute penguin picture, but I´m getting to those!  We took a short boat ride out to the island and then had an hour walking around looking at the breeding colony.  There were Magellanic and Gentoo penguins.  The Gentoo are more rare and have orange feet while the Magellanic were plentiful, nest in burrows and are plain black and white.  And here are the cute penguins…

Catlans Penguin Beach with Hide

More Yellow-Eyed Penguins!

 

Beautiful Catlans Beaches

No Camping!

Milford Sound in the drizzle

Views from Key Summit hike at Milford

More from Key Summit

Even more Key Summit

Doubtful Sound on the way to the boat

Our swanky cabin

Albatross!

Where I caught my first fish

View from the boat where we spent the night

Views in the morning from the cruise

Justin on a Moeraki Boulder

 Then we went out to the lighthouse at Moeraki where they have a hide set up (complete with binoculars!) and watched the penguins coming back from their day of fishing.  They were Yellow-Eyed Penguins which are quite rare and endangered, and we were lucky enough to spot 4 of them in about 45 minutes!  So cool to watch them hop the rocks and waddle up to their nests on land.

Yellow-Eyed Penguin

 In Dunedin today.  Heading down to the Catlans tomorrow.