Penguins!

It took us an hour-long bus ride, half over washboard gravel roads through bleak Patagonian pampas dotted with heavily wooly sheep and the occasional rhea (like a grayish ostrich) but we finally arrived at the Otway Penguin Reserve. But you don't just drive up to see the penguins. There's a kilometer-and-a-half hike from there to where the actual penguins are, and, as is apparently typical of Patagonia, there's a stiff wind blowing off the bay to keep you from getting uppity.

But oh boy! Was it worth it! I saw probably two or three dozen penguins, magellanic penguins, a picture of some of which accompanies this post. (I apologize for the crappy quality of the photo. It is so not my medium!) Magellanic penguins make burrows in which they incubate their eggs and raise their chicks. February is at about the end of the process, so there were no cute little penguin chicks, only adolescent chicks the size of their parents, moulting grey fluff in preparation for their first trip into the ocean.

We were as far from the penguins as the penguins wanted, which in most cases was maybe ten to twenty yards. But one pair came waddling over toward the boardwalk where visitors can walk. They looked us over for a few minutes, apparently decided we weren't leopard seals or orcas, and waddled right past us across the boardwalk and snuggled down out of sight into their burrow on the other side. I was too thrilled to remember to pull out my camera, unlike the half dozen other people within sight who rushed over clicking as they came. Close enough to penguins to see the fine detail on their feathers! By the penguins' choice!

Damn I'm glad I'm doing this!