There are very few places in the world where you can swim with penguins. Most penguins they are found in really cold places, like Antarctica. The Galapagos Islands are one of the few places where you can swim with penguins in temperate water, like 80 degrees. Another is the Tanganyika Wild Animal Park in Kansas. (I think those animals wake up every day wondering just how the heck they ended up in Kansas!)

We encountered penguins at several of the islands that we visited and sometimes found them in the waters where we were snorkeling.

I saw this guy while we were snorkeling.  I surfaced next to him and took this picture with my underwater camera. These penguins don't seem to mind if you get close to them. In fact, they don't seem to be bothered at all by the presence of other large creatures like sharks and sea lions.

Here's what a penguin looks like from underneath the water. It's said that penguins look like "deflated ducks" when swimming on the surface of the water, and that's true; pretty much all you see above water is their head. The rest of the body is under water, like this one.

Penguins are amazingly fast when swimming under water. Their flippers (or wings?) enable them to move really quickly and dodge and turn on a dime. Here's one "fishing" by swimming through a school of little fish at high speed. The little fish are pretty good at avoiding becoming lunch, but every now and then the penguin gets his meal. One penguin even tested my little finger to see if it was tasty when I snorkeled nearby.