![\"Penguin](\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5091\/5509232680_aa5e929e29_z.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nEverything that you imagine about seeing penguins, free range penguins, is true. You are, perhaps, unaware that you smell penguins before you see them, but everything else you know — that they are the perfect combination of adorable and hilarious — is completely accurate.<\/p>\n
There was a lot of yelling on our first day of penguin spotting, mostly because people were getting too close. One is meant to stay 15 feet from the penguins, but that was not happening. By day three, however, the rule seemed to be relaxed for two reasons. One, people were a bit more calm at the sight of the penguins. And two, many of the places we visited were positively choked with penguins.<\/p>\n
No place was more penguin packed than Port Lockroy. Prior to landing at Port Lockroy, we were told that “the 15 foot rule doesn’t really work here, so just watch your step and try to give the chicks some room.”<\/p>\n
I watched a chick pull at someone’s bootlace and then, bored with the inedibility of that, flop down on its belly in the middle of the trail. “Give him some room,” I was told, which meant I walked by him only to have to move aside when another chick was headed right for me.<\/p>\n
I never got tired of looking at the penguins, though I was disappointed, just a tiny bit, that we didn’t see more species of penguins. That doesn’t mean that I was disappointed with the penguins themselves, ever. I loved sitting with them — on every landing I would park myself, not too close, on a not too penguin guano covered spot, and hang out. It was enjoyable to sit with these funny birds — they’d look at me, I’d look at them, and we’d both look out to sea. They’d preen and fuss, I’d zip up my jacket and pull out my camera, we were like friends at the beach together.<\/p>\n
But it was fun to see them from far away, too. With every landing, we would smell them, first, and then, we’d see them, from a distance, lining the shore, little butlers all in their formal black and white suits, wandering back and forth across the ice.<\/p>\n
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