PUERTO MADRYN & PENINSULA VALDEZ, PATAGONIA, ARGENTINA

Puerto Madryn and Peninsula Valdez are on the eastern coast of Argentina as you head south into Patagonia. I travelled for 23 hours by bus across the Patagonian landscape to reach Puerto Madryn. BUS FOOD IS NOT ALL THAT BAD...!!!! I was the only Foreigner on the bus, which was the first time on my whole trip that this had happened. The buses are reasonably comfortable, kind of like how business class used to be on the planes back when I was a kid. They even play movies, give you meals (sometimes) and on this particular bus ride we played bingo! Now, remembering that I don´t speak Spanish and that the game was being read out in Spanish, it was hard to keep up. However, my knowledge of spanish numbers must have been improving as I won the game! yay. It was quite amusing for everyone else on the bus too as the bus conducter told them I was from Australia and couldn´t speak spanish. Everyone laughed and I got a free bottle of wine. I arrived in Puerto Madryn and decided to book a trip to Peninsula Valdez, a wildlife reserve just to the north. I booked this through my hostal which was a nice new place. The only problem with the Hostal is that they had a gas leak and had to turn off all the showers and heaters! Not the best thing to hear when you are in Patagonia and it is almost winter. A few other people at the Hostal were also booked on the tour for the following day and we spent the afternoon walking along the beach to the south where there was a great look out point. One of the girls names was Anna from Sweden. She was also on a long trip. The next morning we headed out to Peninsula Valdez. When we entered the park there was an information centre describing all the fauna (animals) that we might be likely to see. There was also a tower to climb to get the best view of the surrounding area. Puerto Madryn has a beautiful natural harbour where Southern Right Wales come during winter to have their calves. Unfortunately it was too early for us to see these whales, they were not due for atleast another month. We headed further along the peninsula to an area where Sea Lions come to have their babies. We walked out along a cliff top and looked over the edge to see hundreds of sea lion mums with their cubs. The fathers had already left to head to waters further south. The mothers were training the cubs to get into and out of the water. They were all making alot of noise, this is how the mothers can find there cubs in amongst the hundreds of others.
The coast line here was very rocky and was the perfect place for the sea lions to lay in the sun and stay warm. Next we headed to a beach along the ocean.

On the way there we saw Guanaco, a type of Llama that is native to Patagonia. They are a short haired version of the Llama.

They are wild in Peninsula Valdez. They are very good runners and jumpers, and quite easily jump the fences that were built by farmers to keep their sheep in their paddocks.



We also saw another native animal called a Ñunca, a flightless bird that looks like a small Emu.

Sorry, couldn't get a good picture of these in the wild
Then at the next stop we saw two wild Fox and a couple of Armadillo's.
At the beach we got to see some Elephant seals. Again it was only the mothers and calves as the male Elephant seals had also left to go far out to sea. The mothers and their babies were still very big, but the males can weigh upto 3000kgs. They are approximately 3 to 4 times the size of the females.
We couldn´t get very good pictures of the Elephant seals as they were a long way from the viewing area.

The other animal we saw at the beach was Penguins. We were very lucky as the Penguins are normally gone by this time of the year.

We got to see two groups of about 30 Penguins.


Some of them were down on the beach, but a few were still near the burrows where they normal sleep. One was still plucking his soft baby feathers out. They were very close to us and didn´t seem afraid at all.
The last animal we went to see was the Orca whales. They are giant black and white whales that are also known as Killer whales. I didn´t get photo´s of them as they were about 200mtrs from where we were watching them from. We had to use binoculars to see them properly. The reason we could see them is that the Orca´s in Peninsula Valdez have trained themselves to come onto the beach to catch sea lions for dinner. They swim in very fast and beach themselves, catch a sea lion and then wiggle back into the water. This only happens inside two hours before and after high tide. We were there around this time but at almost 2 hours before high tide. The Orca´s were circling near the beach, about 5 metres from it. There were sea lions lying on the beach, but just a little too far from the edge of the water. At one stage the baby Orca came with in 1 metre of the beach. We all got very excited, but unfortunately we didn´t see him catch a sea lion. We saw two other animals that day. The first was the Armadillo. They really are very funny looking animals. The other animal was the fox. It was a very successful animal watching day, and I was glad I had made the effort to come all the way here to see the Orca´s in the wild. The tour group