No one knows quite why but around 2011 about 80 King Penguins showed up on a beach in Useless Bay (Bahia Inutil) in Chilean Patagonia.
The early explorers might not have found a use for this deep indent in Tierra Del Fuego but the lucky owners of this beach have turned the penguins into a business.
These are the only known King Penguins in n South America and it seems they do well here as there are now around 140. We paid $15 each to spend an hour checking them out and we weren’t alone, as there’s a tour every hour. The young man in our tour was a Swiss traveler going north. He and our hitchhiker got along great and left together. Our good deed.
On the subject these penguins mate for a year and try to produce an egg and next year the rebakes look for some other mate. The guide told us about half the eggs produced each year grow to maturity.
This brown ball of fluff is a juvenile molting its youth fuzz and getting ready to look mature.
We had them under close observation.
Mostly they stand around preening and staring intently into the distance.
Like this:
If you don’t tie it down on Tierra Del Fuego sooner or later it will blow away. Learn the lesson:
This headless Kibg Penguin is standing on an egg which it keeps warm while his/her mate is off having lunch. Then they swap.
When they walk King Penguins which grow up to three feet tall, rock their heads from side to side and balance themselves with their stubby little wings. The mixture of severe straight backed posture and clown like walk is really fun to watch.
According to our guide this colony is thriving as the penguins have lots of food in the cold waters of Useless Bay, including their favorites of sardine and squid, and their predators, seals and orcas principally don’t come into the shallow waters so life is pretty easy here for the penguins.
If you are a penguin you stand around and preen or lie around and snooze. Or stand around and snooze with your head tucked into your armpit. Weird.
Goodbye penguins.
Oh and you to disinfect your feet around here. No idea quite why but I live to obey.
We decided to drive twenty extra miles of gravel to a hot shower in a little village called Camerón, planning to rest for a day or two before crossing to Argentina.
This detour would require us to double back to cross into Argentina but we were up for some twenty mile an hour exploration.
The views were splendid and the gravel was recently graded.
Camerón it turned out was not friendly.
