The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

These are the kings of penguins

Not the emperors

Those live on the far side of Antarctica

Their empire is all ice

The kings have a kingdom of rocks and grass.

Kerri was very excited to be visiting their kingdom

But she didn’t let Matt turn her head away from the penguins for long.

The penguins were very regal

They kept their noses turned up all the time

And trumpeted announcements

It must be hard to have a whole species of kings

Everyone trying to boss everyone else around all the time

Some of them hung out in little groups

But most of them were just standing around

Looking this way and that

Being kingly

These king penguins weren’t with the others.

They just showed up on the rocky part of the island a couple weeks ago.

They also liked yoga

And were bossy

And liked dancing

And singing

Loudly

But they didn’t have any fluffballs

Because they didn’t have any nests

They just stood around in lines

Looking at us

Confused

The HMS Beagle is the ship Darwin sailed to the Galapagos on

This is a replica of it

We got to climb aboard it

On the Magellan Strait

Where Darwin sailed

They also had the lifeboat of the Endurance that they sailed in the Shackleton Expedition, which didn’t look like much fun.

And the ship Chile used to claim the Strait of Magellan, which was also too small

Although Darwin’s boat wasn’t exactly huge either

His bedroom didn’t seem too bad

But the lights were fire

And these guys don’t look like they’re having much fun

And this guy definitely isn’t.

And getting down below deck is a bit of a squeeze

I wanna be captain.

This was a small museum with local specimens. Interestingly they prepared birds in a unique way, with feathers still attached to wings. If that’s not your thing, here’s your warning it starts and will continue down a weird path.

Here’s a flamingo.

A vulture.

Probably an albatross.

Here’s a seal jaw with teeth and you can see the extra spikes they have to help hold onto fish they catch.

Penguins look cute even as skeletons, but there are a bunch more coming later that were much more alive that these ones.

Lots of dolphins and whales get washed up in this area, so they have lots of skulls.

There are also many other local birds that they’ve posed in the rafters.

Some of them more in flight.

The local parrots also look unique in this preparation style.

Full skeletons take a lot more work to prepare, but they have some great preparations. Here’s a dolphin as whales have baleen, not teeth.

A majestic owl where you can see the full flight feathers splayed out.

It was a really cool experience seeing such a different presentation compared to what we normally see in natural history museums.

Another little dolphin.

Another vulture

Armadillo scales will preserve, and you can see all the hairs as well.

They do have a really large whale skeleton. It was a Sei whale, one of the third largest whales.

Being in a small place meant that you could get right up to the skeleton and right inside it essentially.

Here’s Matthew for scale next. His head would fit in the eye socket.

Here’s Kerri for scale next to a condor.