Puerto Madryn: Elephant Seals, Flamingoes and yes, we saw Whales!

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Puerto Madryn is about great day trips, lovely seafood, patagonian landscapes and close encounters with the local sea life. Depending on the time of the year you might see Orcas, Southern Right Whales, Penguins, Sea-lions, Elephant Seals, Guanacoes, Lesser-Rheas and various other birds.

Our trip there from Buenos Aires had a few small hiccups and one major one. The first-class service didn't quite match up to our experience from Iguazu. The alcohol was sparse, the seats creaky and the bus was ancient, but we made the best of it. On a positive note, we practically had our own private cinema downstairs and all of the films were in English with Spanish subtitles, so we barely noticed the first 6 hours pass by. After another late dinner we settled in to get some sleep, only to be prodded awake around midnight by the steward. Our bags had been chosen to be searched by the National Guard. Philippe pulled on his shoes and braved the night air. Apparently we were being randomly searched for "Agricultural Produce". The guard made Philippe open the bags and had a good feel around. He got his comeupance for waking us though when he had to whiff our dirty laundry bag! Naturally they found nothing and ten minutes later Philippe was back on the bus, tucked up for our onward journey.

We slept solidly for a further seven hours before the lights came on. As he served us a breakfast of crackers, marmalade and Dolce de Leche biscuits, the steward informed us that the bus was broken down and we would have to wait until the "next passing bus" to rescue us and take us to Puerto Madryn. As we stepped off the bus to stretch our legs we realised that we were in the middle of nowhere. There wasn't much other traffic apart from big trucks. It wasn't going to be a five or ten minute wait! Thankfully our first-class ticket also bought us first-on-the-next bus rights. Ninety minutes later we boarded the next bus which happily brought us to Puerto Madryn.

In Puerto Madryn we were delighted to see that the hostel lived up to its blurb on the internet. We could actually see whales bobbing up and down in the sea from the balcony. The owner gave us lots of advice on the various tours on offer. We decided to do the elephant seal tour the next day and the Penisula Valdes tour the day after. We were back to dormitories and home cooking, so we wandered around town for the rest of the day and picked up our shopping on our way back.

We woke early for the elephant seal tour. The girls we were sharing our dorm with were doing the tour too. We were picked up promptly at 8.30 by El Chalten Tours where we met Martin, our guide. Martin spoke excellent English and chatted to us for most of the hour long drive over gravel roads out to Punto Ninfa. When the bus door opened we were blown away by the beauty of the place. We also risked being blown over the cliff as the wind was very strong! We had to descend about 70m down the cliff to get to the beach. Martin told us that this area was not yet a protected area, so we could walk right up to the elephant seals. He was originally a vet in Buenos Aires and was happy to share his knowledge about all the animals in the area. He told us that we needed to crouch low when we approached the elephant seals otherwise they would think we were trying to fight them! Initally we were apprehensive about getting too close, but after Martin demonstrated how close we could get, we crawled towards them on our fronts to get a better view. These were juvenile elephant seals, and so were still quite cute. They weighed about 500kg, the fully grown ones get to 4,000kg, and develop a huge nose. We spent a quiet hour watching the animals interact with each other, clicking away on our cameras. Then we climbed back up the cliff, jumped in the warm bus and were back at the hostel by lunchtime. We spent the afternoon writing up the BA blog and arranging our bus out of here and flights for later in the month.

Another early start was needed for the day trip to Penisula Valdes. Allison and Gemma were joining us again today, and we all prepared packed lunches in the kitchen as we waited for the bus. Mirta, our tour guide, informed us that we would do a 400km circuit around the peninsula. Our first stop was at Punta Doradilla where we saw whales swimming around about 15 metres from the beach. Next stop was at Punta Pyramide where we boarded the boat. The guide again spoke excellent English as he told us about what we could hope to see on the trip. If we were lucky we would see mother and baby whales, mating whales, and if we were very lucky one of the whales might get curious about the boat and come very near us.

Well, we were very lucky. A short while after passing the sea-lions at Punta Pyramide, we spied several fins in the distance. The boat is equipped with a radar so the captain can bring us to the whales. There were lots of them. We saw anterior fins, sprays of water from blow-holes, smiling whales bobbing up and down, tail fins flapping to communicate and then we caught site of a mother and baby whale. The baby whale was in a good mood and was jumping in the distance for us. Another female whale was being circled by about six other males who wanted to mate. For about an hour we watched and clicked furiously on our cameras, trying to get the money shot of a tail fin as they communicated.

As the captain was thinking about turning home, he and the guides got very excited. The mother and baby whale were coming directly for the boat. They were only a metre away from the boat. As our camera let us down, the whales came directly beside the boat, although they never hit it. The guides said this is a very rare sight, and they thought that the mother was showing "a boat" to her baby. She guided it anti-clockwise around the whole boat and we were able to see the shining skin of the baby and the contrasting older, parasite-filled skin of its mother. When they moved away, the guide explained their theory as we made our way back to shore.

We ate our picnic with the girls in the sun beside the beach. We couldn't resist reliving the trip looking through the photos. As we realised that we would have to filter out about 50 photo's of just sea or half fins we were happy that we seemed to have taken some nice shots that captured the excitement of the tour. The next stop was an hour away at a beach where we might see some seal elephants. When we got there we were happy that we did the "unprotected area" tour the previous day, as there were very few animals and they were only in the distance. The final stop was another hour away at the flora and fauna museum. En route we saw Guanaco (like Llama's) and Lesser-Rheas (like Ostriches) out the window of the bus. The museum explained a lot of what we had already heard and had a watch-tower to see out over the Patagonian steepe.

As we arrived back in the hostal at 6.30pm that evening we felt we had got value for money for our day trip - the highlight of which was definitely the whales. It's a once in a lifetime thing that we will always remember.

We are back on a bus this afternoon. This time it is 18 hours long and will take us to Rio Gallegos, from where were will head west to El Calafate.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Philippe & Sinead

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