39 Photos of Falkland Penguins, Because Penguins

Of course I’ll eventually start writing about travel again, but right now recapping my recent trip to Scotland or giving out advice for visiting Norway still makes me feel a bit sad!

My friend asked me to write something cheerful, so I spent this morning scrolling through old photos trying to remember what cheer feels like. And then I found my penguin photos!

I took an absurd number of photos of penguins during my recent two week Falkland Islands trip. In fact now that I think back, I probably spent most of my time in the Falklands watching penguins, and a big reason for that was that I felt really lonely traveling the Falklands alone and the penguins always managed to put a smile on my face.

So I hope today they’ll put a smile on your face too!

The Falklands have five types of penguins: gentoo penguins, rockhopper penguins, macaroni penguins, magellanic penguins, and king penguins. I didn’t see the king penguins, but I saw plenty of all of the others to make up for it.

Rockhopper penguins reminded me a lot of grumpy old men. They hopped around the coast and showed no fear of humans, so whenever I was near them I had to take extra care not to let one hop right into me. I got the feeling that if they could hold a stick they would have shaken it at me. And while all the other penguins I saw seemed quite clumsy, the rockhoppers could hop up steep cliffs without a problem.

The macaroni penguins look like particularly plump rockhoppers wearing yellow crowns. I guess they weren’t photogenic though, because I can’t find any photos of one in my collection.

The magellanic penguins are super, super shy, but I thought they were definitely the prettiest. They looked so fancy dressed in all black and white!

And then the gentoo penguins look the most like the classic cartoon penguin you already love, and sure enough I loved the gentoo penguins the most. They were also so much fun to watch diving into the water and surfing waves back to the shore.