Chile - Punta Arenas


For Christmass we stayed in Punta Arenas, a bigger town with nice restaurants. There we visited several days pinguin colonies. The pinguins on the following pictures are all Magallan Pinguins, very small, around 40 cm. We were lucky to visit them during the breeding period, so the babies were already born and stayed close to their mother on land. Pinguins are just so foto-genetic, you can take just 1000 pictures of them in a few hours. On the next picture, two fellow pinguins watching secretly behind the bushes the spectacle before them.


Everybody follow the leader, nicely in 1 row!


Face to face... who will attack first...


Mother and babies posing for us. They aren't afraid at all of humans, they know perfectly that their only enemies are in the sea (sealions, wales,...), on the land they have zero enemies.








When the pinguins aren't searching for food in the sea, they just like to entertain themselves and the others with screams, songs and even attempts to fly...








Normally pinguins do not come close to you and even will run (small jumps) away from you. But this pinguin was a very curious one and spent some time inspecting his visitors. While tasting the trousers of Antoine, he let him touching his body. It is a very soft, little bit oiled skin.





This island has a population of some 150.000 pinguins and 1 lighthouse. They are all taking care of their children during 3 months of the year. After the breeding period they all return to the sea.