Friday

Ooh, almost caught up.
On Friday we all drove out to Fairy Penguin Island, because it was another favorite from our 1998 trip. It's out near Rockingham, about an hour drive from my aunt and uncle's house.

The penguins that live on the island are known as fairy penguins, due to their size, but they're also called blue penguins. They are just gorgeous little animals. I think that we could have happily watched them all day long. We got to the beach with not long to spare, but had time to order a quick lunch before jumping on the ferry over to the island. Once we got over to Fairy Penguin Island, we were just in time to watch the penguins being fed (or most of us were - Stephen spent the morning ironing out his visa, so he missed that ferry and had to catch a later one). The penguins in the enclosed area are all there for a reason (mostly due to being orphaned as babies).

They are adorable.




I think that my baby is tired of being photographed.




Hello there.








Here is the jetty to the ferries.




And here is the ferry that you ride back to the beach.




While we were waiting for Stephen, we got to watch this guy, who repeatedly went 20 feet or more in the air.




A puffy beach plant.




Sophie playing at the beach on the island. Felix was there too, but I guess that I don't love him enough to take photos of him that day.




Seaweed, showing how crystal clear the water is.




You're able to walk (carefully) around the island, and see many penguins out in the wild. They're molting right now, and we had to be very careful not to scare them.






These lizards are also all over the island. *shudder*




This is a sandbar that connects the beach to the island. Adventurous folks like to walk back and forth on it, however there have been MANY drownings because of it (two guys died days before we were there. They put their children on the ferry, then walked across with their wives, who are still in the hospital).




After we had soaked up enough penguin adorableness, we caught our sea lion tour. The captain started off the trip right, by playing the theme song to Gilligan's Island. The waves look deceptively benign in these photos - about two minutes into the trip, i was asking whose idea this was.






But the trip around the islands was beautiful.




This guy bit it about 1/2 a second after I took this photo.




Sea lions! Man, they are lazy.






There are also pelicans that live on this island. If you squint, you may be able to see them up on the hill.






The only downside to the day was that I somehow forgot to use sunscreen, and got a pretty bad sunburn. The rest of the day was wonderful.