When I tell people about Antarctica, I often get the question if I saw penguins and polar bears. Well, there are no polar bears in Antarctica, but boy did I see penguins! January is a great time to meet some penguins, since they are all on their nests. The first eggs are hatching, so I even saw a bunch of baby penguins in the rookeries.
The big emperor penguins are further South than we could reach, but I saw three different types of penguins on my journey. The vast majority were Gentoo penguins. They are the classic penguin in the black and white suit. They have a little white patch near their eyes. With about 80cm height, they are also the tallest we saw. The second kind are the chinstraps. As the name suggests they are easily recognisable by the black stripe on their chin. The smallest of the penguins we saw are the adélies. As opposed to gentoos, their heads are completely black, with only a white ring around their eyes. The first 2 days I struggled to see any difference in the penguins, but I quickly learned to look out for their individual features.
On all of our landing sites we would find penguin colonies. The tourist ships in Antarctica have to coordinate landings since only 100 people can visit a site at once. This means it’s never crowded and the penguins always outnumber the humans. Our expedition team would go ahead and set out safe routes for us to walk. The penguins also have routes. You can see their trails, called penguin highways. We had to be extra careful around those and try to keep a distance. However, penguins don’t always keep the same distance rules. When we landed at Port Charcot, a penguin was following me. Then 2 came up in front of me. They seemed lost and I was stuck in between them. I ended up in a sort of dance with one of them. He walked forwards and I followed. He turned around and walked towards me, so I backed out. We were at this for a while until he found his way and I could proceed along the path for humans.
Landings weren’t always comfortable. Imagine hundreds of penguins sitting on the rocks and snow. While one penguin is out fishing, the other guards the eggs and/or offspring. This means they can’t really move. There’s poop everywhere. Onboard the ship we even had a lecture on penguin poop, with the hilarious video of a penguin on a nest, bending over and spraying poop behind it, regardless of who is there. It gets smelly! When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go! The penguins themselves are covered in poop, unless they’ve just come out of the water. But even coming from the sea they have to cross the snow that is red-brown from poop. And where do we walk? You guessed it… straight through the slippery, poopy snow. The rubber boots were an absolute necesity. I was just happy I had rental pants and didn’t bring my ski pants.
Life is tough in Antarctica. The penguins often have to walk great distances to find a relatively safe spot for their nest. Sometimes they have to climb really steep hills. Yhen they gather little stones to create a nest. Thry maintainit throughout their stay and we saw penguins walking around with pebbles to strengthen their nests. Of course there were some lazy ones who thought it was easier to steal from their neighbors. Neighbors weren’t the only problem. There are other animals around. Different penguins would peacefully coexist and I even saw a seal sunbathing in between the penguins. Flying birds, like the brown skua, are after their eggs. I saw two skuas working together to distract a parent. One of them successfully flew off with an egg in its mouth.
Little penguins stayed close to mummy or daddy, even hiding underneath them. The Adélie chicks had hatched a bit earlier and were already quite big. They were dark brown and very fluffy. The Gentoos often had two chicks. They were still a lot smaller and were begging their parents for food. We saw the parent reach over and the chick digging into the parents mouth to receive the pre-chewed food. When I tried to leave Petermann island, a curious penguin was trying to join us. There are always some barrels and bags with equipment on the snow and a curious penguin had come to check it out. He spent some time poking at the barrels. Then he tried to jump into the bag with our life jackets. He hit the side and fell back. This was enough to lose interest and move on.
Every landing it was great to watch the penguins. I love how they seem to stumble over the snow with their tiny feet. Then they turn onto their belly and slide for a bit, propeled by their feet. And they can seemlessly get back up and start walking. But they are also excellent swimmers and you see them come out of the water with little bows. Getting into the water seemed to be challenging. It was as if they knew it was cold and didn’t really want to go. They’d walk to the edge of the rock, ready to jump, but somehow backed out again. Really, watching penguins never gets old.
