Today we visited Punta Tombo, the site of the largest penguin colony in the Americas with over 500,000 Magellanic Penguins. We rented a car, which we shared with two other travelers who wanted to visit the colony. By 9:30, Joylani and I, British Ronald and Spanish Racquel were on the road, heading 2 hours south to Punta Tombo. The drive was not particularly scenic, just more flat desert scrubland. Just bushes to the horizon, nothing taller than a meter. The landscape flat and identical in every direction. The only change we experienced on the drive was turning onto a gravel road for the last half-hour.

Guanacos

There was a ranger station at the reserve, where we parked and from where we began walking to the beach. The first animals we saw were actually a herd of guanacos. I’d never seen a guanaco in real life before and I was surprised by both their large size and awkward appearance. The first penguins we saw was laying down under a bush. It had dug a little hole and was laying on its stomach, probably keeping an egg or two warm (most Magellanic penguins lay two eggs at a time) from the cold and windy air. After spotting the first one, we looked around and noticed many bushes with penguins beneath. As we walked along a marker path, we noticed more and more penguins until nearly every bush had one under it.

But there were also a lot of penguins without bushes, who just took shelter in holes in the ground. While most of the penguins we saw were just lying around incubating, there were quite a few walking to or from the ocean. We read that the penguin couples trade-off between keeping the eggs warm and getting food. So we saw them waddling around alone or in pairs.

They looked so funny and off-balanced when they walked- I was surprised that we didn’t see any fall over. A few times they got going so fast, they dropped down to all “fours” and “ran” though. And although they were slow and somewhat off-balance on land, they seemed a lot more agile once they got to the ocean. Much of the beach was off-limits to visitors, but we could look down on it from a rocky headland that jutted out into the ocean. There were a few dozen penguins just hanging out on the beach and a constant stream of ones waddling to or from the ocean. Once in the water, they would just zoom off into the sea. And we saw a lot zip into shore like torpedoes, then waddle out of the waves and onto the beach for the long walk back to their hole.

Aside from the fun of being sometimes within inches of the penguins, we saw and learned a lot of interesting things. I don’t know if penguins are territorial or combative, but we saw one chasing another around and making a ruckus. Once it had scared the other one away, it just stood there and howled in the wind. We also saw two penguins walking together back from the beach, but one had a limp. Its buddy would stop every few meters and wait for the slow one to catch up. It was pretty amazing to see how far some the penguins walked. I mean, most of the nests were at least a few hundred meters uphill from the beach, if not a lot further. We also saw a large brown seabird land with an egg in its mouth and then peck at it. Another bird joined it and they pecked at the egg until they cracked it and began eating it. Ronald said he saw the brown bird steal the egg from a seagull in midair, which I was bummed I didn’t see. After that, I did notice that there were quite a few seagulls and the brown birds constantly circling overhead, probably trying to spot exposed penguin eggs (as pictured below).

every little hole in the ground is a nest

We stayed at the reserve for about two hours, which was enough time to walk all the trails within the reserve. Penguins are one of those animals that I’ve always wanted to see in their natural habitat and today did not disappoint.