- an estimated number of 60.000 pairs of Magellan penguins swim here every year during the south hemisphere Summer.
- they come from northern shores, that goes up until the Brazilian coast, and swim all the way down to the South because they need a lot of solar light for the breeding season.
- in this time of the year in these latitudes they get up to 18 hours sunlight!
In fact, while in Punta Arenas, it was strange to notice that the sunset was only at 10 PM and that we still had some sunlight until as late as 11 PM (this was December 2014)!
We started to follow the delimited path that crosses the island up to the lighthouse. The amount of visitors coming from the ferry was large, but we were not bothered by them and neither seemed the penguins! They would come from the sea, climb their way through a pretty steep slope and they would cross our path right in front of us. We could get incredibly close to them!
Fun facts that a guide told us is that each penguin pair lays only two eggs a year and when the baby is born and is big enough it swims to the sea never to see his parents again!
On the other side, Magellanic penguins mate with the same partner every year. Females recognize their mates through their call, which we've heard a lot of times during our visit to the island.
Next we flew back to Santiago to get ready for Christmas!