Today we were doing a full day wildlife tour of the Valdes Peninsula, which is a world famous, UNESCO World Heritage Area and serves as a protected nature reserve for its seal colonies, penguin rookeries, wild llamas, seabirds and whale watching, So 21 of us set out for a Big Day O’ Nature. Unlike the west coast of Chile which was heavily settled by Germans, here the settlements on the shores of the wide bay of Golfo Nuevo (New Gulf) were settled by the Welsh. Attempting to escape religious persecution in Britain, they were encouraged by the Argentine government with the promise of 100 square miles of land along the Chabut River. The settlers came in 1865 and they named their first settlement Puerto Madryn in honour of Baron Madryn back in Wales. Puerto Madryn is now a city of 120,000 people with thriving aluminium and tourism industries.
The port seemed overly chaotic when we disembarked for some reason, but we managed to find our driver and guide, Sergio and Roberto (‘Berto for short) and made our way to a nice clean, relatively comfy bus, which is a bonus. All loaded up and off we went headed north. No far up the road, ‘Berto introduced himself, gave everyone a map of where exactly we were going and then mentioned we were doing nearly 400km round the peninsula today.
*blink blink*
FOUR HUNDRED KILOMETRES! I don’t remember signing up for that… but at least there should be plenty of interesting scenery on the way – we’re still in Patagonia here, and Patagonia is absolutely gorgeous. On a trivial note, one of the guides told us that ‘patagon’ means, ‘big foot’. So ‘Patagonia’ literally translates as ‘land of big foot people’… I have no idea what that is about.
Our first stop was about an hour’s drive as we popped through the Valdes Peninsula visitors centre to have a look at a map, use the bathrooms and check out some interpretive displays on the wildlife that is indigenous to the area. Some stuffed hawks, and whale bones, and clean loos later, and we were back on the bus in 15 mins ready to go see some animals.
We drove another 40 minutes to reach the Puerto Pyramides area where were walked a short few minutes to a viewing platform that overlooked some dramatic cliff coastline. From the viewing platform, we could see a large sea lion colony, about 500m – 1km away. Which is interesting enough, but my little happy snap camera is not up to wildlife photography at those distances. So you’ll have to forgive the dodgy photos. The cliffs were quite dramatic, and it seems most of the peninsula coastline is like this.
After pulling out of the Puerto Pyramides area, ‘Berto started making some ‘mate’ (pronounced ‘mah-tay’) for the driver. It is a traditional South American brewed drink made with yerba mate, that is most frequently shared among whoever is present. There are some protocols surrounding the sharing of mate, one of which is that it is rude to decline. Another is regarding the direction the straw is facing in the cup when it is handed to you, and yet another is if you saying you have enjoyed it, apparently if you apply ‘yes’ this means you have had enough and you will not be offered more. Anyway, I thought I would try it, and let me tell you it tastes as bad as it looks – it is so foul I think they may be sipping unknowingly on rehydrated sheep shit. Never again thanks very much!
Oh, I forgot to mention earlier that we were about 25 minutes into our drive when I realised I was wrong about the interesting scenery bit. For any Americans following this, if you’ve ever wanted to know what the Australian Outback looks like, just take a drive around this weird, dry little peninsula in Argentina and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what to expect… only I have to say, as a general rule, our Outback tends to have way more trees.
After this, we started having trouble with our air conditioning on the bus. Which ordinarily isn’t a problem – you just open the windows. Unfortunately, however, we are on a bus which all the windows are completely sealed, so we were kinda getting very hot and it was becoming hard to breathe. So, we made an unscheduled stop at ‘Berto’s family’s sheep ranch to give Sergio a chance to check the air con system. Berto’s family spend most of the summer in town at Puerto Madryn, but every week or so they come out to the estancia to check on the sheep. They have the main house, a workers dormitory for the shearing season and a small hall that is used for feeding all the workers during the season. There were some trees here, that had obviously been carefully nurtured to offer some shade, but most of the ‘garden’ was covered in a succulent similar to what we would call a pigweed type plant. The place is so dry they keep only one sheep per hectare, and looking about the countryside, we have no idea what they must be eating.
Unfortunately, Sergio couldn’t get the air con going, but he did get the window near the driver opened and popped up some vents in the roof, so… all good and we were on the road again. We drove for another half an hour or so and came upon a large natural salt lake. There are two on the peninsula, but unfortunately, they are on private property so we couldn’t go in to have a good look. *sad face*
Next, we drove to Punta Cantor, to check out an elephant seal colony. Again the coastline was beautiful and very dramatic after spending hours driving through the low, flat and dry terrain. The elephant seals were all flopping about on the beach – what a life, just laying about in the sun, go for a swim for some fish later, and then lay about in the sun some more. Some of these big male elephant seals weigh in at just over three tonnes! One of the ladies on our trip was just observing what a great life they must have when I thought I saw a black fin about three metres off the beach. Waited a few moments, and it saw it again – YES, that there is an orca cruising the beach looking for easy prey. Okay, maybe life is not so stress-free for seals after all. We watched this amazing whale, with the bad reputation, swimming slowly past all the seemingly oblivious seals, but I bet they knew exactly where he was, and that they were safe. The orca could not risk attempting to swim up onto the beach there to snap up a seal because the waves were not strong enough to carry him back into the water, and he risked being stranded on the sand. We were all watching enthralled at how close he was going to the seals, all hoping for a David Attenborough documentary-worthy moment, but he just cruised on slowly past.
On the way out we met a hairy armadillo, who happens to live in the area. His primary activity seems to be running away from tourists who are chasing him for photos. Poor thing. When everyone left him alone, he pretty much came trotting over to curiously meet people, but chase him and he was running away. Again, I saw people trying to pet this animal – no idea how wild it is, no idea if they bite or can harm you, but people were doing it anyway?! Maybe it is the fact that we are from Australia… where nearly all the fauna and half the flora can kill you, and that makes us somewhat reluctant to touch strange creatures. Not sure. But we all look at these people trying to touch unknown animals and think, ‘what a wanker?!’
Then there was a quick drive by stop for a penguin rookery and more Magellanic penguins… very cute.
After our brief encounter with the orca, which absolutely made nearly everyone’s day, we were faced with a two-hour drive back to the ship. The noisy corrugated road, that was in sad need of grading, the endless ‘desolate’ landscape (someone else’s word, not mine), and before you knew it – there was nearly 20 people sleeping all the way back.
All up it was an interesting day, but far too long, and not what we were expecting – I think most of us were expecting short drives with lots of wildlife stops, not long drives and only three wildlife stops. Had we known that we were in for a 400km drive, I strongly doubt that many of us would have chosen to spend our short time in port sitting on a bus all day driving through terrain that looks just like home. It was just way too long, especially when we understand Puerto Madryn has plenty of points of interest to offer visitors. Oh well, not every day can be Easter Island ( the benchmark for amazing days out for the rest of my life, I think)… there’s alway tomorrow. 🙂
