Day 6 — Penguin Island

We awoke early to the sound of the ocean, the gentle rhythm of the surf gradually reminding us of where we were — in a tent on a beach on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. All in all, not a bad place to be.

Jose and Patty were already awake by the time we stumbled out in to the daylight, and after a quick breakfast, Manuela and I piled into Jose’s truck and headed out to the wharf. As we drove, Jose explained to us that it never, ever rained there. It promptly started to drizzle, but Jose valiantly pointed to his useless windshield wipers as evidence that this was the exception, not the rule.

The rain stopped as we got to the dock, though the sky continued to threaten throughout the morning.Once at the dock, we got a look at our boat, a sturdy, though decidedly open 12 footer named Papi.

Once the motor was fueled and the life jackets on, it was time to set off.

The initial trip to Penguin Island (to be honest, I have no idea what the real name of the island was) took about 20 minutes. It proved just enough time to learn a bit about the surrounding land and economy, and to figure out that the waves were about four times as long and twice as high as little Papi. The following video provides a little sample of our trip out:

done

As the land receded behind us, the ocean suddenly seemed a very large place to be in such a small boat. Our hosts were undaunted by the white capped waves however, and I did my best to take my cue from them.

As we got to the island, we noticed a couple of things at once. The first was the birds, floating and flying and squawking by the hundreds.

There were gulls, of course, but also cormorants, pelicans, and other species beyond my feeble ornithological knowledge.

The second thing I noticed was the stench of said birds, which coated the rocks of the island white.

Interestingly, the preponderance of bird guano in that part of the world was partly responsible for not one, but two 19th century wars: the Chincha Islands War between Spain in Peru from 1864-66, and the War of the Pacific between Chile and an alliance of Peru and Bolivia from 1879-83. It turns out that bird guano was a sufficiently potent fertilizer to affect the wealth of nations. Amazingly, Peruvian guano still making headlines in our commodity-starved global economy.

Soon we left the first flocks of birds behind, only to run into a large herd of South American fur seals.

Apparently, a group of seals is actually referred to as a harem (at least it is if Yahoo! Answers is to be believed). I can only assume that whoever coined this usage has never seen (or smelled) a group of seals up close. The seals were boisterous and curious, quickly jumping in the water to get a closer look at us. You can see in this video just how close they got to the boat:

done

Though the seals were not at all aggressive, I definitely felt safer in the boat than out of it. As our tour around the island continued, we eventually lost sight of the seals, whose curiosity seemed to have been satisfied.

Soon enough however, we had something else to hold our attention — Humboldt Penguins!

Surely, penguins must be among the most dapper and retiring animals on the planet. Dressed to the nines in their black and white camouflage, the penguins were surprisingly hard to spot among the grey-brown rock of the islands.

As soon as we came in view, they started to scramble up to higher ground, clearly less curious about us than the seals were. For a flightless bird, they gained altitude remarkably quickly, and soon climbed high enough to be out of the reach of even the most determined predator.

Sadly, even there the penguins were not totally out of danger. Jose told us that, despite the government’s efforts to protect them, poachers still preyed upon the birds for food and the occasional pet, proving that, for some people, nothing is too cute and cuddly to eat.

We encountered several waddles of penguins as we circled the island. (Seriously, that’s what they’re called when on land. On sea, a group of penguins is called a raft. I think both names are quite appropriate.) Our quest to see penguins thus fulfilled, our thoughts began to turn landward.

The boat, however, wasn’t headed there just yet; Jose had one more treat for us. As we rounded the last corner of the island, we came upon one, then two, then six graceful fins arcing through the water, and before we knew it, we were smack in the middle of a pod of dolphins!

They swam effortlessly, breaking the surface of the water in an even, continuous rhythm, appearing two by two by two. They were with us only for a few moments, but it was enough to give us a sight to last a lifetime.

After the last dolphin disappeared, we finally turned homeward. The boat took a while getting us there; it seemed to spend as much fuel climbing over the waves as it did propelling us towards shore. Even so, we eventually made it home, a little queasy but very happy. We had lunch with Patty and Jose, and then caught the only bus out of town. It happened to be the same one we’d been waiting for the day before, and it arrived some 22 hours after we did. Still, we had no reason to complain — we’d seen penguins, and boated with dolphins in the meantime.