The Penguin Parade!

This was by far one of the memories that I will always remember in Australia. The Penguin Parade was just amazing. At dusk, all of the penguins come out of the water every night in their groups, and go to their burrows on the land. I thought a couple penguins would come out of the water, but there were thousands. It was unreal.

We were luckily a part of the VIP tour, so when the penguins first started coming out, we were in the VIP sky box. We were in there with a few rangers. The one ranger Dave was in charge of counting the number of penguins that came out of the water for the night. One of the groups had over 300 penguins.. I don't know how he counts all of them. I was joking around and told him that I would help him, so I counted the small groups from 4 penguins to 40 penguins. There was no way I could count more than that. They were so difficult to count, because all stand next to each other, in no particular order, no single file line or anything, and they all walk at different paces. I kept getting confused which ones I counted and didn't count yet, so I started over so many times! Eventually, after many groups of practice, I was getting the same numbers as Ranger Dave.

So photography is not allowed during the Penguin Parade. The Rangers realised that the flashes from a camera hurt the penguins eyes, and make them run back into the water, instead of going to their burrows. At first, they tried no flashes, and then there were still idiots who left their flashes on, so they had to take away photography all together. Of course, I had to take pictures, so I made sure that my flash was off, as people around me were still taking picture with their flash. Although the penguins in the pictures are hard to see, you can clearly see their little white bellies.

Some penguins got tired from walking, and would take a quick break and just look up at the crowd.

Such cute penguins!

This is the beach that the penguins come from. In the back, there are two observation decks, where you can see the penguins coming out of the ocean. And then towards the bottom of the picture, that is another deck where you can walk with the penguins as they are going to their burrow.

Like I said before, this was by far one of the coolest things I have ever experienced. It was an amazing time, and I am so thankful that I was able to share this with my parents!