Backpacking South America

As we were planning our trip, we were really excited to visit Punta Tombo, a fauna reserve created to protect the unique fauna of the area and the largest colony of Magellanic penguins.  Every year, 200,000 couples of penguins arrive to have a baby and hang out.  So that means, at the peak, there are 600,000 penguins (400K moms and dads, and 200K babies).  When we visited, the males were onsite and the females were arriving.

We left Puerto Madryn for Trelew, only about an hour bus ride away and one of the first cities in Argentina to be settled by the Welsh.  From Trelew, we scheduled an excursion to Punta Tombo, which is about an hour and half drive from Trelew.  We made our reservations in English, our voucher said to be ready by 8:00 and the woman who made our reservation reiterated to be ready by 8:00.  We were ready by 8:00.  We waited, we waited…and we waited.  It was 8:30, which we thought wasn’t so strange because from our experience in Buenos Aires, no one is ever on time here.  Jared went to call the office just to double check that they didn’t forget us.  Their response was, no you should be ready by 9:00.  Oh, right.  Soon after that phone call, a man shows up to pick us up.  It was just us.  He chauffeured us around that day.  There was no one else.  So, we wondered if we were the only people who signed up for this tour or if they did actually forget us.  Regardless, off we went.  It was good Spanish practice.

From the moment we started walking, there were so many penguins (pengüinos en espanol) all around and we couldn’t even see the ocean, yet.  We thought, how can there be so many penguins nested so far from shore.  Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly as we had expected. 

Penguins are monogamist and come back to Punta Tombo every year, to the same nest and rebuild and lay eggs.  While we were there, there were hundreds of penguins.  The men come first to rebuild the nest, then the woman come and they share in the duties.  We saw a few couples, but most of the penguins seemed to be males, just waiting for their spouse.

We had a great time watching them casually walking around.  They don’t seem particularly adept at walking.  In fact, they take a few steps, and then have to stop, lie down, and take a brief rest before continuing on.  It’s like they’re narcoleptics.  Watch the video to see.

At the end of the reserve, we were able to watch a number of the penguins come up out of the water.

They also have a very strange cry or howl.  We weren’t able to determine completely if they were mating calls, men asserting their superiority or what purpose they actually served.  We even saw a few fights between penguins, some pretty badly beat up penguins and even some dead ones.  They fight each other sometimes.  The men are very macho.  We were also told that sometimes the foxes can get after them.

It was so interesting.  There were so many, we were literally stepping over them.  I can’t imagine what it’s like when all the women arrive and the babies are born.  As far as we could see, in all directions were penguins, up on the hills behind us, to the right and to the left.  We were surrounded by penguins and ocean.  It was all very surreal.