Your Penguin Tour Guide

Hopper is a northern rockhopper penguin. He is also a qualified tour guide. Hopper usually lives on the Tristan da Cunha islands in the south Atlantic Ocean. Today however Hopper is ready to travel the world and he wants you to accompany him on his journey.

Hopper the Explorer is a fun Street View tour of some of the world's most famous tourist attractions. Select any one of a number of tourist locations from around the globe on the Hopper the Explorer interactive map and you can explore the site using Google Street View.

However this is Street View with a fully animated walking penguin. Click on the Street View image and Hopper the penguin will wander around the Street View scene. When Hopper is in the perfect spot you can even take a photo to perfectly capture the moment and save it for posterity.


Hopper the Penguin is not the first animal to make an appearance on Street View. Street View actually has quite a long association with a number of different animals. For example in the Faroe Islands you can explore Street View while in the company of woolly sheep.

Google Sheep View is a 360 degree panoramic tour of the Faroe Islands which was photographed by the islands' sheep. To capture this imagery the sheep carried a special 360 degree camera on their backs. They then wandered around the island, exploring the most beautiful spots and chewing lots of grass.


Of course the sheep of the Faroe Islands are just copying the cats of Japan. Panoramic Street View technology was in fact first invented by cats and first released in Onomichi, Japan.

Cat Street View is an impressive virtual tour of Onomichi, providing an unrivaled cat's eye view of the city. The tour takes in many of the cat-about-town's favorite shops and restaurants in the city. It also shows the locations of some of Onomichi's most loved cats.

The format of the tour will be familiar to any non-cat type entity who has ever used Google's Street View. It consists of a series of connected panoramic photos of the city. The big difference however is that the panoramic photos in Cat Street View are all taken from a cat's lowly perspective. And it's all the better for it.