Penguins are funny little creatures. On land, they wobble and toddle like awkward children, flapping their wings and shaking their feathered tails. With their beaks thrust forward and their butts in the air, they achieve a strange sort of comic dignity, like little people in black feathered suits. In the water they are graceful and smooth, more like fish or otters than birds.

Yesterday Macky and I went to Parque Nacional Isla Magdalena, a penguin colony about an hour by boat from Punta Arenas, Chile. On the island we were able to spend an hour observing and playing with these hilarious little animals. They are incredibly social, squawking and scuffling and snuggling with one another. It’s adorable. There are also about a million of them on this tiny, treeless rock of a little island. As the boat approaches, you think the island is covered with white rocks. Then you realize it’s covered with penguins. According to one of the guys who lives on the island and studies the penguins, there are more penguins on Isla Magdalena than there are people in Punta Arenas. So, more than 120,000 penguins. Talk about high population density.

After an hour with the penguins, we got back on the boat and drove by another island with a large sea lion (lobos marinos, en español) population. We couldn’t get off here, sea lions not being as friendly as penguins, but it was really incredible to see these massive creatures in the wild. Some of them swam out towards the boat. Like the penguins, they are graceful in the water and awkward and lumbering on land.

Since they wouldn’t let us take a penguin home as a pet we bought a stuffed one for 4 dollars in Punta Arenas. We named her Paquita la Penguina and she will now be accompanying us on all our adventures.