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Published: September 27th 2009
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Hello hello,
we are still alive and having fun. Time has been short as we have been busy watching all kinds of animals.
But now we have found a few minutes (this always takes longer than a few minutes - a few hours are actually needed with the internet connection in most hostels) to write something about the last week - week and a half? We seem to have forget time.
So, our last blog was from the northwest, since then we have travelled furhter south past buenos aires along the atlantic coast. (we are actually even further but this blog is not about that). We have decided to split this week into two seperate blogs as they were kind of all seperate locations. But anyway lets get started.
Puerto Madryn was our first stop. The idea was to wathc whales and other sealife. We arrived slept the night and then went to the beach to get a view of the town and its coast line. We sat in the sun, I started to roll myself a fag and then "splash" we saw our first whale fin crashing on the water about 20-40m of the coast. Wow.
As it turned
out, there are hundreds. They come here to the Golfo Nuevo to breed and give birth. They stay from Sep to Dec. One year they give birth the next year they come and breed then come back and give birth...and on and on...(If anybody is interested I got my own real-life animal porn. might upload it when we find a good PC. They mate with one female surrounded by up to 10 males. They then one after the other have a go. This is to make sure that the female is impregnated.)
Everyday we would spend some time on the beach watching these amazing animals. We even got up on our last day to watch the sun rise over the ocean and then view the whales awakening. Brilliant.
Apart from whales we could see flamingos in the sea just off the shore - I always belived they were in the tropical areas. From the peer, where whales swim directly under you, we saw some seals.
On our second day we visted
Peninsula Valdes.
A penisula180km north of the town Puerto Madryn. This has THE biggest colonie of Sea elephants. A huge colonie of mallegan penguins, sea lions, seals and many
other land animals including
Guanacos.
The tour started early in the morning we were collected from a tour guide (great guide, very laid back and helpful) and headed with about 8 others from our hostel towards the penisula. Our first stop was a beach 30km from the town. Here the water depth increaces very quikly allowing the whales to be as close as 10m away from the shore (and yes they do get that close). We stayed here for 30min, the sun was coming up on the horizon and the whales were having what seemed to be good time. Our journy continued for about an hour along a graveled road towards the park.
Most of the side roads are like this. The views are amazing. It seems(is) empty. The land is flat and very dry (it never really rains here as the wind comes from the west, the coulds break over the andens and dry air then droughts the landscape) the horizon is huge and the sky seems to be everywhere. Its hard to explain, but if you have been on a boat on a sunny day then thats is how it is, just without that dry "openess".
After
entering we visited a museum there, looked at a whale skeleton and many other stuffed animals. We then headed towards the town inside the Peninsula, Puerto Piramides, from where you can go on a whale watching boat trip which was fantastic. The whales (southern right whales) are very curious and slow. They seem interested in the boat and come very close. This characteristic was also the reason they were nearly extincted back in the ???. They have now recovered and in a few more years experts reacon that they will no longer be an endangered species.
After taking lunch on the beach we travelled north towards the center of the semi island, seeing all types of animals from gaunacos to armadillos, Mara - a type of hare with long legs, sheep from the never ending estancias, burrowing Owles which - arr, guess what they do!
We also saw the third lowest lake in the world. It lies at 48m below see level and is a saltlake. Arriving there we walked along a cliff, viewing see elephants chiling on the beach, some had harems but as the season just started there wasnt many. The best was watching these 5t and 4-5m
Estancia
so sieht es hier in Patagonien fast ueberall aus males shuffeling along , one male chasing the other and then fighting. We also got to see some penguins, which was good but not as many as I expected.
If lucky you can also spot orcas swiming just of the shore waiting for pray. There are a colony of about 25 living in this area, and this is the only place on earth where they hunt by stranding themselves and then taking the retrieving wave back into the ocean. We were told that this technique is not natrual and that they have taught themselves this to catch the pups of the see elefants, or pinguines. Only seven of the 25 orcas can use this skill.
We did not have luck and our side and therefor we missed getting a glance at them.
Oh well...
The whole day was spent driving miles and miles in the blazzing sun and then sighting some of the biggest water animals.
Thats about it from me, alot of information and too many views to write about. But belive me when I say: it is beautiful and well worth seeing.
Diana will write about the other tours we took in this nature paradise. Till then
and take care...
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tommy
non-member comment
At the Zoo ?
The old man and the sea ? Nice crack by the way dean :) Really, really nice pics though Please give my best greetings to Karl :) Hamburg is starting to get cold now, but it is still sunny most of the days so you can really enjoy the autumn. 84 days till Christmas.... Cheers Tommy