From Esquel, I head east to Puerto Madryn. It´s to be my base for exploring the Penninsula Valdes, home of orcas, Magellanic penguins, sea lions, sea elephants, rheas, guanacos (a type of camel and relative of the llama), maras (Patagonia hares, they are like a cross between a hare, a deer and a chihuahua and are my new favorite animal, aside from cats of course), and the southern right whale.
It´s an 18 hour overnight bus ride and I go there with a vague dream of renting a car to drive out and see the penninsula on my own. It´s expensive, but it´s either that or take an organized bus tour, which I´m not too keen on. I head to a car rental office and go inside. About 2 seconds later, a girl comes in and says something to me in Spanish. I don´t understand any of the words that she´s saying, but I somehow understand that she & her friends are renting a car and would I like to join them? My traveler´s luck has struck again!
She is German and a linguistics student doing an exchange. Her friends are 2 Mexican girls- a mechanical engineer and an architect- also doing university exchanges.
We rent a car on the spot and immediately drive two and a half hours south through the desert to Punta Tombo, home of a colony of 500,000 Magellanic penguins. This is my first time seeing penguins in the wild and they are so great. Whatever they do, they look either cute or funny (see photos for evidence). Some of them are still laying on their eggs or nursing their babies, others are just hanging out. The landscape is beachy, but there are these beautifully colored pinky-red rocks and the water is a pale peppermint green color. The contrast is amazing. We also spot guanacos in the park and see a beautiful rainbow. We drive back to Puerto Madryn and decide to meet up the next day at 9 to explore the peninsula itself.
9am rolls around and we hit the road! It´s like an hour and half drive to the peninsula from Puerto Madryn. Our first destination is Puerto Piramides, home of the southern right whale. We get distracted by a viewpont promising (and delivering) sea lions and stop for an hour or so. Then it´s on to a whale watching boat. We have to cruise out of the bay for about 45 minutes since the whales have already begun their migration. Someone spots a whale in the distance, just a dark blob barely floating above the water line. It´s the first of many to come.
The southern right whale is curious by nature and will come right up to the boat to check things out. You can see in the pictures just how close they come. This is my first time seeing a whale and it was amazing to see the mothers with their babies or for them to lift their ugly mugs out of the water or spray water out of their blowholes.
We return to port and jump back into the car to head to the northern tip of the peninsula. We get to a lookout point that´s supposed to be full of sea lions, sea elephants, penguins and orcas, but it´s a total disappointment. There are like 10 sea lions that have beached themselves and are doing absolutely nothing. A nice afternoon for them, but not too exciting for us.
We drive back south to another lookout point (it´s closed) and then back to town. It´s a long drive and we don´t get back until 11pm, but it´s worth it. We only passed two other cars the whole time we were on the road, so it felt like we had the place to ourselves. It was like being on a nature safari with tons of guanacos, rheas and maras crossing the rickety dirt road in front of us and like 5 rainbows in the sky.
We have the car until noon the next day, so we meet at 8am and drive to a cliff overlooking a very large sea lion colony. Again, most of them have beached themselves and are doing nothing, but there are some babies who are more playful and active. We can see some swimming back to the bay from the ocean. They´re super fast and agile in the water, but so awkward on land. My favorite thing that they do is flop around on the rocks, plowing right over other sea lions when necessary, then fling themselves off of the rock and just lay there in whatever position they happen to fall in. Seriously, sea lions have an awesome life.
My new friends and I return the car in the afternoon and go our separate ways. They invite me to travel on with them, but I´ve got plans of my own and things I want to do. I spend the rest of the day bumming around town and eating this yummy Brazilian paella made with coconut milk.
The next day, I make a day trip to Gaiman, a Welsh settlement in the heart of Patagonia, for a proper afternoon tea.
