The Last Penguin

If you’re hoping to see all the world’s 18 penguin species there is good and bad news. The good news is that the extraordinary voyages required will take you from the glittering Galapagos to the epic shores of Patagonia, from the rough-hewn coast of South Africa to sunny cities in Australia. You must also, of course, go to Antarctica—probably more than once.

The bad news is that to complete the list, you will also need to visit Tristan Da Cunha. This is not to say there is something inherently dreadful about this extremely distant British Overseas Territory but rather speaks to the conundrum of just how to get there. Located close to the exact centre of the South Atlantic, it lies halfway between Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and Cape Town, South Africa. It has no airstrip, and though its resupply vessels offer limited berths for their often brutal six-day sailings from Cape Town, they are usually taken by islanders coming and going from their community, which is the most remote on Earth.

A handful of committed maniacs also sail to the archipelago each year, braving the enormous unpredictability of the open ocean for weeks at a time. For normal people, the final and most comfortable option is to visit on a cruise ship. Even if you indulge in this comparative luxury, there is a 40-50 percent chance your vessel will not be able to operate in the rough swell that commonly wraps itself around the islands.

Sitting in port in Ushuaia, Argentina, I knew of all these risks, and yet, as someone doomed to try and see (and photograph) every penguin species, I also knew I had no other option. So remote is Tristan Da Cunha, that my only realistic hope was on an Antarctic expedition cruise ship coming to the end of its southern season. 

At the close of the 23/24 season, a handful of vessels planned to travel via the far-flung archipelago as they made their way to the west coast of Africa, then north, all the way to the Arctic to begin months of expeditions at the opposite end of the Earth. Unfortunately, just as this transition is happening, the northern rockhoppers are preparing to go to sea, where they spend many weeks foraging without returning to land, beyond the lens of mankind. Many cruise operators weren’t planning to visit until after the penguins had gone.

In short, as I boarded the expedition ship Vega, I knew I was taking a gamble. The itinerary would take three weeks to get from Argentina to South Africa, but I had only allocated a couple of days for Tristan Da Cunha. The initial plan focused on a day at the seabird mecca of Gough Island and then a day at the settlement on the main island of Tristan, but bad weather or bad luck could easily scupper these plans, and so with them, my chances of seeing the northern rockhoppers.