We couldn’t wait to go visit the penguins of Chiloe on Islotes de Punihuil, during our stay on the island of Chiloe. There are two species of penguin colonies in the reserve: Magellanic and Humboldt.
Over the course of our travels, we have learned that there really is something special and amazing about seeing animals in their natural habitat. It’s different than a zoo! The penguins of Punihuil did not disappoint!
The Islotes de Punihuil are situated about 30km west of the city of Ancud. We stayed in the town of Castro on the island and it took us about an hour and a half to drive to the beach access point. The drive was beautiful along the coast and paved the whole way. If you don’t have your own transportation, there are many tour operators out of both Ancud and Castro that offer daily tours including transportation.
Once we arrived at the beach, we were quickly directed to drive right along the sandy beach to a parking area. There are a few different tour boat operators who offer the exact same tour. Whichever boat is leaving next is the boat you get on! They are all the same price (7,000 pesos per person) and seemed to all work together to help get people out to the boats.
We were given life jackets and climbed on a hand pulled cart that was pulled out to the waiting boats.
The tour takes you out to the little islets where the penguins live and breed. The water was a beautiful turquoise colour and full of sea birds. Our boat visited five different islets and lasted about 45 minutes. In order to protect the habitat and the penguins themselves, the boats keep a good distance so bring your binoculars and a zoom lens! Rest assured that you can still see the penguins well even without binoculars and we appreciated the steps they took to protect the area and the wildlife.
The water was moderately rough but we had no problems with motion sickness.
Many other birds call the reserve home as well, and the ornithologist in all of us was in heaven!
Once we finished the tour, we explored the area around the beach as it was a picture perfect day. There is a short CONAF trail on the western end of the beach with beautiful views of the islets. There is also a short trail leading up to a lookout point on the east end of the beach as well.
The penguins were a hit with both the ten and under crowd as well as the adult crowd! Who doesn’t love penguins!
Thank you for this post, we are going to be 7 weeks in Southern Chile and will put this certainly on our list
5 years later we went to the same place and saw the same penguins. Maybe. We arrived early early so we had the beach for our selves. If you have your own transport I can recommend that.