After waking up extremely early (yes, 7:30 am is early for me..), making yet more peanut butter sandwiches, and jigsawing our snorkelling gear into our bags, we were off for Penguin Island. The journey there was not the smoothest, one 45 minute train ride, one 35 minute late bus who then took us to the wrong stop, and one ferry ride later, we were on the island.
The island is home to ~1,000 Little Blue Penguins, although while humans are allowed on the island (which is only until 4:00 pm), the penguins are out in the ocean, going about their daily business. Because of this, we weren't able to see any wild penguins, but we did spot a seal investigating the humans close to the shore.
Despite the fact that the wild penguins were out at sea, we did get the chance to see the penguins that are kept inside. These 10 penguins were once wild, and have since been injured in some way and required rehabilitation. After being looked after for so long, they were no longer fit to live in the wild, so they live in their own little pool now.
Out of the 10 penguins living there, there was one sole female, Jerry. Little Blue Penguins mate for life, so because there is only one female who already has a partner, the 8 other male penguins have started to partner up. The two oldest penguins, Lou (21) and Perry (17), have been together for 10+ years. Their ages themselves are such an accomplishment as well, seeing as this species of penguin only lives an average of 7 years.
The island itself wasn't a very large island (only 12 ha), so we were able to walk around it easily The water was vividly blue and clear. None of the pictures that I've taken on this trip are worthy of the beauty of seeing these landscapes with your own eyes.
We spent a majority of our time on the island snorkelling. We saw mostly various species of seagrasses, algaes, and the like, but not many fish. It was still nice to go for a look, regardless of what we saw.
Lastly, for Sophia, here is a huge spider that was spinning its web right outside the bathrooms. It wasn't purple but it was pretty big and made my skin crawl.
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When it came time to head back to the mainland, we were informed that the ferry was only running on one of its three motors so we would have to wait a bit longer to get off of the island. While waiting, we were in the line behind a British family who had five children between the ages of probably 7-10? and there was only one girl. They were talking about the funniest things imaginable and at one point they huddled to make a plan and I heard one boy say, "Now, here's the plan, if we don't make it off of this island, we find the youngest child and eat them first!" I then heard another counter that and say, "I think we should find the baldest person and eat them so we won't have to worry about getting hair in our mouths." I guess that's a valid point... Listening to them, definitely made the hour long wait go by much quicker than it would have devoid of these amusing children.
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