Did you know there is a land with five species of penguins numbering in the millions with cozy bed and breakfasts, temperate weather, British-style pubs and restaurants, quaint crime-free villages that are populated by friendly English-speaking folks, whose currency, stamps, and even national crest proudly displays penguins? We're talking about a real-life Penguin Paradise here, and it's called the Falkland Islands.

The Falklands might have forever remained a tiny blip on the map, were it not for the unfortunate struggle for power which brought these islands into global consciousness in 1982. Home to 2,200 people, 600,000 sheep and 10 million penguins, the Falklands, located about 300 miles off the coast of southeastern Argentina, and about the size of Connecticuit, found itself the focal point of an unlikely turf war between Britain and Argentina, when Argentina invaded, claiming territorial sovereignty to the islands, which they refer to as the Malvinas.

To everyone's surprise, the British responded by sending out a military task force, and within 72 days after a short, but fierce conflict the Argentinians were driven off, in what is sometimes referred to as the Penguin Islands War. These, with the conflict a memory the Falklands have retained their traditional role as a peaceful and quaint British colony, mostly unchanged since the turbulent wartime, except for the 2000 British servicemen now permanently stationed there.

The Falklands consist of two large and hundreds of smaller islands, with the two main inhabited islands called East and West Falkland. Stanley, the capital, is located on the eastern end of East Falkland. This quiet historic seafaring village of 1750 inhabitants is home to most of the Falklands residents and the main point of embarcation for visitors to the islands.

In 1983, Mount Pleasant Airport outside of Stanley was enlarged to accomodate jumbo jets, making the islands more conveniently accessible for jet setters. However, the preferred mode of transportation to and from the Falklands remains by sea, just as in the 19th century. The major difference being a whaling or clipper ship of a hundred years ago has given way to luxury cruise lines, many of which begin and end their tours in Rio de Janeiro or Punta Arenas in Chile, with some continuing on to South Georgia Island and the Antarctic itself.

Although on opposite sides of the world, London and Stanley actually share the same latitude, but weather in the Falklands most resembles northern Scotland: cold, rainy and windy winters and temperate summers. The Falkland's residents are nearly all of British descent and speak the Queen's English. Life is simple and traditional.with many families tracing their lineage for generations. The remoteness of Stanley has allowed it to mantain its feel of a small English town of the early 20th century, with small shops, guest houses, pubs and lots of Brit tradition. It's houses are made of mostly local stone and tin due to the lack of trees for wood and are colorful and full of unique character, with imported plants, goods and produce from Britain in the shops.

The rest of the Falkland Islands are known as "camp," ironically derived from an old Argentinian Gaucho word "campo," meaning countryside. Only 450 people live here, scattered throughout the two main islands, on isolated sheep farms or small settlements. In "the camp," visitors can choose between four lodges and a growing number of bed and breakfasts, all a stone's throw away from the nearest penguin colony.

The most remarkable feature of the Falklands is its outstanding wildlife, and there is no better place in the world to see penguins in their natural environment with the comforts of home. This tiny island is host to five seperate penguin species, with hundreds of rookeries dominating the rugged shoreline. As in most cases where man and nature have clashed, nature has unfortunately received the short end of the stick, and this former whaling and sealing colony is no exception. But, in recent years, man and nature have mostly coexisted, and with the tourist dollar beconning, the locals have seen to it that the indigenous penguin populations have done well. After decades of interaction, many of the Falkland penguins are accustomed to human visits, and don't consider humans a threat. On West Falkland where most of the penguin colonies are located elegant king penguins gather together by the thousands along the coastal green pastures to nest during winter, while their teddy-bearish brown chicks fatten up on what mom and dad bring back from the sea, waiting for up to a year to molt and finally to get their adult colors.

A respectable distance away are the more humble Magellanic penguins in the high grass and kelp. These penguins use underground burrows to nest and raise their young. The most inland of the penguins are the red-beaked gentoos, who nest in enourmous colonies sometimes many miles inland. They gather together in large compact rookeries in order to protect their eggs and young from skuas and gulls. Many natives and visitors seem to favor one type of penguin or another, and for many, it's the colorful crested rockhopper, or their near relative, the elusive macaroni. Rockhoppers are small, noisy and feisty penguins whose rookeries are usually found on exposed beaches and windswept cliff facings. Although there are tens of millions of macaroni penguins in the sub-Antarctic, only a few hundred of these birds reside this far north of their more common and colder nesting grounds.

Also, part of the Falklands' outstanding non-penguin wildlife are elephant seals, sea lions, dolphins and whales, as well as scores of sea birds, many of them unique to the islands. So if you want the whole penguin enchilada, and a pint of Her Majesty's best ale to wash it down with, the Falkland Islands is the place for you.

Recently I heard from a person who was in the market for some penguin items. It seemed that ever since this guy's brother moved to Alaska, he'd become smitten with "those cute little waddlin' critters." Even after I broke it to the guy that there were no penguins in Alaska, he insisted that he and his brother had seen them and I better recheck my facts. Although this guy was obviously on the wrong side of the bell curve, the fact that he claims to have seen penguins on the wrong side of the world doesn't mean he's completely out of his bird.

Welcome to the world of the auks, the penguin imposters of the north. They number in the millions and are much more diverse than their southern counterparts, with 22 universally recognized species. In appearance, these birds resemble penguins, with, for the most part, black backs, white bellies and yellow beaks. Their heads are relatively large and their legs are mounted so far to the rear that most must stand upright and even waddle on land. Like penguins, most pursue prey under water, steering with their feet and propelling with flightlike motion and grace with their wings.

However, unlike penguins, all living species of auks can fly, and a good thing too, considering the array of land-based predators in the Northern Hemisphere compared to the south. For all these reasons, biologists call auks and penguins ecological equivalents -- species that fill the same niche in nature, but at opposite ends of the world.

The most penguin-like of the auk family are the murres and razorbills. Standing erect, ten inches tall, with stark white fronts and dark backs, murres colonies, located in the snowy and usually rocky environs of the arctic circle, can number in the hundreds of thousands. Razorbills are not as numerous as murres and are only found in the North Atlantic Islands.

Of all the auk family, puffins come the closest to elicting the feeling of endearment often extended by humans to penguins. Because of their clownlike masks and waddling walk, they too are thought of as cute and adorable by the public. Although murres are really more penguin-like in appearence than puffins, the puffin's rotund body, cool sounding name and not-quite-erect stance have seemingly won the Northern Hemisphere's People's Choice Award for birds. At one point puffins were know to travel as far south as Massachusetts, after centuries of hunting and human habitat encrouchment they presently t can only be found as far south as the coasts of Maine, Canada, Alaska and Scotland.

No account of the penguin lookalikes would be complete without mentioning the most famous auk of all -- the great auk, which is known in many circles as the "original penguin" -- yet extinct since June 3, 1844, when the last known living pair and the egg they were brooding were taken by pelt hunters on Eldey Island, off the south coast of Iceland. This large flightless bird, roughly the same size of a gentoo penguin, ranged at one point from the northern British Islands around the North Atlantic to the coast of Maine. The greatest breeding concentrations were on Funk Island and its nearby rocks, off the shores of Newfoundland, Canada.

The great auk resembled an immense razorbill, but with puffinlike white markings on the sides of the head. The wings were tiny and totally functionless outside of water, also with white spots on them. Extremely awkward on land, the great auk was requiered to spend long periods of time on it nesting, rendering themselves and their eggs very vulnerable prey to man and killed by the thousands for food. Having lost the ability to fly thousands of years ago, the great auk could not survive mans age of sail, colonization and exploration. The pathos of the great auk's extinction and the fact that it was the only flightless auk of modern times (others are known from fossil evidence) is worth our attention.

Also striking is that this bird is known as the most penguinlike of the auks, but that seems to be getting things a bit backward, as it seems the great auk was a penguin first. You see the word "pengwin" was one of the most common names for the black and white bird among English sailors. This dialectical usage precedes the European discovery of the Southern Hemisphere penguin varieties by a several centuries. Today no one knows just where the word "pengwin" originated. Some say it is derived from the Latin "penguis" (meaning fat), or from the English "pin-wing", but neither case is particularly convincing. Most likely is that the term came into Englis from the Welsh "pen gwynn," meaning whitehead, an obvious reference to the auk facial markings and a logical means of separating it lingustically from the similar-looking, but much smaller, razorbill. The razorbill hunted the same waters and would be difficult to distinguish from a distance from it's larger cousin, unless of course it took to the air.

If the origin of the word "penguin" seems obscure, there is no real mystery as to how it became attached to the Southern Hemisphere flightless birds that now go by that name. You see there were plenty of Welsh sailors in the British navy of hundreds of years ago. Some, obviously would have sailed with Sir Francis Drake and his successors around Cape Horn during the heyday of British exploration. First spotted by Europeans on these expeditions, the birds we know today as penguins began to be refered to by that name due to a clear case of mistaken identity by the Welsh sailors who recogized them as the black and white birds they had known back home. A mistake that has stuck and as far as I'm concerned has fortunately never been corrected.