Punta Tombo is a peninsula along the coast of Argentina approximately 110km south of Trelew. It is part of the marine National Park and is where the largest colony of Magellanic penguins are outside of the Antarctic. They migrate here from southern Brazil in September and stay until April to nest and lay their eggs.
The Magellanic penguin was named after Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who spotted the birds in 1520. Millions still live on the coasts of Argentina and Chile but are classed as a threatened species due to oil spills which kill 20,000 adults and 22,000 juveniles every year along the coast of Argentina, and climate change which displaces fish populations so they have to swim an extra 40km from their nests (80km return) to get food whilst their mates guard the nests from predators and starve. Predators include sea lions, leopard seals and giant petrels.
Increased frequency of extreme events such as storms, drought, temperature extremes and wildfires associated with climate change, increases the reproductive failure of Magellanic penguins.
It took us 2.5 hours to drive the 62km as most of it is on gravel - at least part of it was being graded which makes the driving a lot easier but we still had to go through the ritual of cleaning up afterwards. We get a lot of fine dust inside so we have to wipe down all the surfaces and shake out all the seat covers and mats. On this side of the country most of the spots worth going to entail driving along gravel roads so if we want to see anything we have to deal with the dust!
We arrived at 15-45 and went to the entrance booth. It costs 180 pesos per person ($12) but is only valid until 6pm when the park closes. We were told to go and speak to the boss, Elvio, to ask for permission to park up overnight.
Not everyone is allowed to stay here and Elvio trusts his instincts. If someone's Spanish isn't good enough to understand the rules, or they have dogs or children that might cause stress for the penguins then he won't allow people to stay overnight on the car park. We didn't find this out until the following day but we obviously passed the test and were given permission. It helped that I made him laugh and that our Spanish is good enough. He even came by later that evening to make sure we were alright. Part of the test? Probably but we weren't going to go and see the penguins until the following day, as we had promised.
We did go and see the visitor centre though and we handed in our handwritten note from Elvio allowing us to visit without paying until the next day. We watched a very old film about the penguins and learned about their habitat and breeding. There are currently 210,000 pairs here and we were hoping to see some chicks.
We got our tickets at 8am the following morning and spent 3 hours walking along the boardwalk in the morning and then almost another 2 hours later in the afternoon. We saw a lot of chicks and smiled at the penguins waddling along in the funny, clumsy way. We heard a lot of squawking so it was quite loud and it was very windy which you can hear on the videos.
In the afternoon one penguin waddled up to Kirsten and bit her shorts! We also saw a Cuis and baby (they look a bit like a guinea pig), lizards, guanacos, nandus and various birds. We really enjoyed our time there and will let the photos and videos speak for themselves.
Penguins at Punta Tombo
