This was seriously the best gift ever! I LOVE penguins and seriously want one as a pet. They are so cute and loveable. Seeing them in their natural environment, only 1 foot away from me, and learning more about them was incredible.
Here is the website for this penguin colony:
The Ultimate tour that I did was a small group of 10 and we went to a separate beach than the rest of the large crowd that comes every night to that part of the island to watch them. At sunset, all of the little penguins return to the shore and make up to a 2km hike to their nest. They wait in the water, calling out to each other, until the exact right moment and emerge, look around to check if it is safe, and walk as a group (on the exact same path every day) to their individual nests. Some had chicks to feed and I was able to witness that when we were walking back to the main building.
This a a completely natural penguin colony, so we were only there observing, not talking at all, sitting in the dark with night vision goggles, and walking quietly around them if we ran into any while returning.
On the beach, we saw about 150 penguins emerge from the ocean while we were sitting there and we came across about 50 more walking on the paths back. They can see up to a total of 3,000 each night when they include the other beaches in the colony.
Sadly, there used to be about 200,000 little penguins in this colony alone and it dropped to 10,000 when the land started becoming developed. The government bought back some of the houses and is protecting the penguins now, trying to get it closer to where it once was.
I'm so glad I was able to do this and will never forget it! :)
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