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Published: February 6th 2010
Hi all,
This time the entry is fully written by me,
Tal, as a pause for Nitzan, Omer & Lilach, who are seriously trying their best to bridge the almost one-month gap between our last entry and our current location. Today, 6th of February, we are almost 5000 Km up north from Ushuaia, in the city of Puerto Iguazu, gateway to the famous Iguazu Falls.
In this entry - take a long breath, I will take you from the cold winds and endless rains of Ushuaia - in the southernmost tip of Argentina, all the way to the scorching heat and humidity of lovely and lively Buenos Aires (only... I will not make it all the way to Iguazu). So Let's start:
After 3 rainy yet beautiful days in
Ushuaia, we started to head north (we had no other choice, since south from here leads only to Antarctica...), for the first time in our trip. As we discovered only a few days before, there is no way to return from Tierra del Fuego to other parts of Argentina directly through Argentinian land, but one has to cross again the border to Chile for a few hours, take a
ferry in order to cross Straits of Magellan (for the 2nd time after doing so only 4 days before), drive 130 Km towards Argentinian Border and only than reach back to Argentina, meaning we need to deal with border formalities in 4 border-crossings, within half a day... What a silly way to allocate borders, so one cannot reach from one point in his country to another part, without crossing another country?! Anyone knows if such a curiosity exists anywhere else? (Let us know..).
Anyway, it was a run against the clock since we left at noontime from Ushuaia, wishing to overcome the gravel roads, the strike in the Chilean customs and the timing of the ferry within... To make a long story short, we did it! Although arriving to
Rio Gallegos on the Argentinian side at 0200 (yes, yes 2 am!) - we were happy to cross back to the “Promised Land”. Now, at 0200 we have to find a camping or a hostel and this was a true challenge. Nothing was found so we decided to park near a deserted camping (which was locked), only to discover that we have to fight fierce Patagonian winds before we could
mount our tent. I mean really fierce, as we have never slept totally in open doors, always with a shelter, of woods, a barn, or a wooden ceiling. Being exposed to 70km per hour winds, isn't something we did before...So I found myself looking for big rocks to stabilize the tent, then we moved the sleeping kids to almost flying tent, and at 0330, we were all in our sleeping - bags, listening in frenzy to the whirling and shrieking winds blowing into our tent. We prayed that we will overcome the night. Morning arrived and no relief from the Patagonian winds. Nitzan had to stay in the tent while me & Lilach packed our stuff, so Shachar will not “fly” away... I am serious.
Since we decided not to fly from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires - as most muchileros do - and we wanted to take advantage of our car and camping gear, we decided to “search” for as much as possible wildlife along the eastern coasts of Argentina - and it has so much to offer.
A quick breakfast and internet pause in the “blessed” Wi-Fied gas station of YPF, and off we drive to our
first “wildlife destination”,
Monte Leon Nat'l Park, one of the newest of Argentina's national parks.
Monte Leon, as we discovered a few hours later, is a perfect place to start with, having a large colony of Lion Seals as well as Magellanic penguins. The park lies in an unmatched isolation, away from the tourist “waves” we have encountered lately - what a relief... From the main road (Ruta 3), we drove 20 Km to the gigantic and deserted beach, ate our lunch in a beautiful setting (a wooden restaurant with huge windows, overlooking the coast line, (only 2 tourist aside and such a kind owner),and then started our trip, in the Patagonian bleak landscape. We walked on the beach at low tide, saw from a distant a sleepy colony of 50-60 Lion Seals, and then headed to watch the large colony of Magellanic penguins. This was unbelievable - a well marked trail leads from the gravel road through barren hills towards the cliffs overlooking the coast. Nobody around but a few Nandus and Guanacos (A relative of the Alpacas), grazing in the low and wind-stricken bushes. After a 45 minute walk, we are starting to hear the loud brayings of
the penguins. A few steps more and we are in the land of penguins! It looks so strange, as in our lives we see so many National Geographic films and think, well, penguins probably should live and breed on vast ice fields, and dive in Arctic waters... True? Well, NOT necessarily. The Magellan Penguins, live on the (ice-less...) western coasts of Chile and Eastern coasts of Argentina, breeding on those lands, and never get even close to ice or snow...
We actually arrived at the best time of the year to watch these funny guys, since the chicks are already hatched, and the families are on land - not in the sea, busy with the raising of the chicks, that cannot swim at this stage of their lives. It was such a fantastic experience for all of us, to see up-close-and personal these lovely creatures. As Nitzan already told you (but I could not resist sharing my information as well) they are not afraid of humans, so we could walk in the trails, only a few cm away from a braying father, or a busy mother cleaning her newborn chick with so much care. The colony is widespread along
the cliffs, and we could notice all around us thousands of burrows dug by these creatures, in which they hatch and raise their 2 off-springs - mother and father sharing all home chores, including incubation of the eggs! We have a lot to learn from them, apparently... Sunset and cold winds told us it is time to say good-bye. We returned to our car, Shachar is partly on Lilach's back, then mine.
We are at our way out, when suddenly Lilach is shouting - and I mean SHOUTING:
”Stop the car, stop the car”. I immediately obey, then turning to my left, only to see about 50m away from us, sitting gracefully on the edge of a not so deep ravine - a real
PUMA!! You must understand that this is probably one of the rarest animals in Argentina and maybe in all of South - America. It is on the brink of extinction and we were hoping to see this creature ever since we departed to our jungle trip in Peru, than Pampas trip in Bolivia, and now here in Argentina. We were astonished to see it but Lilach - who else - was quick enough to take
out the camera and shoot 3 times without even checking the camera mode. You may view the results on the side, pls appreciate!
By the way, we got to see the Puma, a minute after we finished loughing at signs we just saw on the penguins' trail warning the visitors from Puma and explaining how to behave in case of encountering one... We were loughing because we could not believe that someone actually get to see Pumas.
Having our “desert of the day”, we headed satisfactorily to our night camp, singing all the way praise to the PUMA... We spent the night in Isla Pavon - nothing special to mention this time (No winds, no thrills and a simple pasta dinner...).
The next morning, we continued to
Puerto San Julian, in our next search for wildlife. We found pretty easily the
Coastal Route, just 1km out of town. Nothing special to tell about the town itself, except the trivia fact (that I learned from Wikipedia..), that the shore of this town, is the shore where sailors in Magellan's fleet encountered the large footprints that led to the exclamation
"Patagon!" and the name Patagonia (meaning
“land of large footprints”). It's also the place where the English explorer Francis Drake beheaded a rebellious crew member and the young naturalist Charles Darwin hiked over barren hills, searching for freshwater and formulating theories about the geological history of South America. Anyway, the drive was short, pretty boring, until we reached a sign “LOBERIA”, meaning “Lion Seals”. The kids woke up, and after a short hike, we got a very close look at a very noisy colony of the Lion Seals. We were able to see from where we stood about 100 mothers and cubs (fathers at work?!), some of them fighting over places to lye, some of them sleeping, and some of them doing nothing but staring at the sea. A few meters away, we discovered an amazing colony of beautiful red Legged Cormorants: an aquatic bird, having as its name suggests, shiny red legs, a short red and yellow beak, and a very busy life... After watching them for quite some time, and viewing the beautiful gulls gliding in front of us, we returned to our car, and continued onward Ruta 3, until a small setlement (Fitz Roy), where we spent the night in a bizarre camping site, fool of
building materials, toys scattered around and only one old camper. All, for a funny price of 15 AR$ (less than 5US$). Bizarre - yes, but had all we needed - a built BBQ place for our best BBQ ever (eye steaks), light, electricity point to charge all our appliances, toilets and water...
In the following morning, we drove for quite some good hours to
Punta Tombo Wildlife Reserve, which has the largest colony of Magellanic penguins
in the world. As we learned from two research students from USA we met in the Reserve, currently live here about 600,000 penguins, from the middle of September through March. A nice trail with boardwalks and wooden bridges takes you through these cute creatures' habitat, while they are staring at you, fearless, just a few cm away. Although the chicks are already hatched, as mentioned before, the penguins are not aggressive toward humans, unless you get really close to the nest or to the chicks. The noise was enormous. So was the smell... We noticed literally millions of them just as far as the eye can see, over the hills and down to the coast line. One thing we really liked is the
funny and clumsy way in which the penguins walk, like a drunk man after a party, but once in the water, they become very elegant swimmers. The golden sunset at 2100 - as every day - reminded us we need to leave. Sadly we say good-bye to the penguins, and heading back to the car. We drive for a few hours, again, north bound, until
Playa Union, there, accompanied by the local friendly policemen, to our nightly camping (don't worry we did nothing wrong, he was just helping us to find a campground).
In the next morning, we are going to the city of
Trelew, 20 km away. Our daily attraction is the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio, featuring exhibits on extinct dinosaurs from Patagonia as well as from the rest of Argentina and from Brazil. Among them, are a huge Amonite fossil, a 70-million-year-old petrified dinosaur eggs of a carnotaurus, and a sample of the bones of a 100-ton, 40-meters-long dinosaur (“Argentinosaurus”...). The kids were fascinated, especially Omer and Shachar, who asked Lilach hundreds of scientific questions, I am not sure she was able to answer at all.... Not that I could have... Later on, we headed to a
small town called
Gaiman, a welsh origin name, to Argentina's weirdest attraction, Parque Desafío. It is described as “Colorful, kitschy, and entirely creative”, but since I was quite tired, I sent Lilach with the kids, which were not impressed - to say the least - by this “Colorful, kitschy, and entirely creative” park. I must say they were very tactful when returning from the tour, since I stayed at the reception with the daughter of the creator of that park, Maria del Carmen Caballero. The park is filled with recycled goods: 80,000 bottles, 15,000 tin cans, and the remains of several automobiles, and it took over 30,000 hours of work, since 1980, when the creator started to build a playground for his grandkids. But its maintanance is very poor, so the park is no longer colorful and from their descriptions and few pictures, it seems it looks a bit more like a junk yard - how pitty.
After our short visit in Gaiman, we leave to our last wildlife destination in this region -
Península Valdés - that was discovered by Hernando de Magallanes in 1520 and being a home to large variety of marine animals and birds, including
large colonies of Elephant Seals and Lion Seals.
Since it is evening time, we are rushing to
Puerto Piramides, the only town in the Peninsula. In the visitor center we get all the info we need, as well as a good map of the area. To our surprise we learn that the “street cat” (as Lilach decided and thus did not stop the car...)we saw on the highway on the night before, strange as it is, was not a street cat at all, but a very elusive and rare cat called “Jeofrys Cat”; Naturally, this time, we have no photo of this beautiful nocturnal creature...
We continue to Puerto Piramides, only to find out that the Municipal Camping, is packed with millions of Argentinians, as it is also a very popular resort for the locals, due to its being close to the coast, as well as the nature park. The camping was bustling with campers who came from all over Argentina, and I must add, we have never seen so many old Mercedes camper-buses concentrated in one spot. Once you see them, you can't believe they are still functioning.. Seeing them gives you the feeling of a camping
site back in the 60's.... Do we feel younger at that point?! I do not think so... I like to call these bizarre vehicles, “museum on wheels”, as you can see in the photos.
Finally, we had to jam our tent within others, but we had good company around us, as we discovered a couple hours later - a very friendly family from Buenos Aires, nestled in their old Caravan, and their princess, being chased by Shachar for the next two days... The routine comes back - I am dealing with the fire with the kids, Lilach and Nitzan are preparing salad, and within an hour, we are all seated by the concrete benches, eating dinner, dim lights around us, and we feel so damn gooood!
We sleep very tight that night, and woke early, since it got pretty hot early in the morning. Coffee, tea and cereals with milk, and we are ready for another day of exploration.
Península Valdés is designated a UNESCO World Heritage site for its important marine mammal populations, and with its unique landscape. We expected a lot from that day, so we started our day in
Punta Norte (the Northern Point),
not before driving for almost 2 hours on a 64-km dirt road. Immediately after we reached Punta Norte, we had the strangest encounter in our trip - a curious Armadilo emerged from the sand dunes behind the parking lot, and started to sniff around us, as waiting for a cookie or something. The kids were fascinated with this strange pet, and started to try and fondle him, even Shachar, which usually runs away from jumping dogs trying to leak him... After a while, the Armadilo lost interest, probably because we did not have any spare cookie for him (by the way - what do armadilos eat at all???).
Then, after our new pet left, we entered the Lion Seals Trail in the sand, and within 5 minutes or less, we were able to watch from a distance an extensive colony of Lion Seals. This time, unlike in previous encounters, we were able to see the immense males, weighing up to 1000 Kg, with their huge mane (ra'ama in Hebrew), acting very aggressively toward any intruder to their territory. The whole colony were very active, noisy, and busy with the new little cubs, born only a few weeks ago. It
was fascinating to watch so closely these creatures in their natural habitat, and not in the zoo. The kids and us were so anxious to see an Orca (Killer whale), as this is the beginning of the hunting season, and probably the only place in the world - here in this very peninsula - that Orcas actually attack the seals on shore, and than using the waves to drag themselves and their prey back into the waters! Well, we haven't been that lucky, but we could have seen a couple of Orcas, cruising in the distance, their black and white backs shimmering in the sun, maybe even watching the seals from afar. That was truly an awesome sight!
We continued to the next vista-point at
Caleta Valdez, 30 Km south from Punta Norte, where we saw another colony of Magallan Penguins, as well as a colony of Sea Elephant females and cubs. We actually wanted to see the males, with their huge trunk, but none were at sight, and we learnt from the park ranger that the males are currently far out in the sea, catching food, and they will return only in early March. With these news we
actually finished the day, and returned to our camping in Puerto Piramides, not before the kids had a second chance to play with “their” Armadilo pet, that returned for another visit. This time he got really close with the kids, as you may see in the photos. On the way back we encountered also guanacos, nandus and partridges, running in front of the car, as if they are trying to get run by it; Probably they were suicidal partridges...
Next day we started our long drive toward Buenos Aires, about 1300 Km up north. We stopped for night sleep (in tent in the beautiful municipal camping) in
General Conesa and on the next day (again in the municipal camping) in
Santa Rosa.
On the way we had some of the most amazing sunsets we have ever seen, and once again, I was so impressed from the strong colours and the amazing reflections in the lagoon aside the road, that I had to take more than 1 photo... Sorry...
Eventually, on the third day we arrived to
Villa Mercedes. There was nothing special about that city apart from the fact it is located in the middle between Buenos
Aires and Santiago de Chile, where we rented the car, so the fine we should pay for drop-off, would be the lowest. After a very comfortable sleep in real BEDS (we said goodbye to our tent and camping era and slept in a hotel), we woke up to a new day, returned the car to the guy from the agency, sold 2 sleeping bags to our hotel owner's sun, ate lots of ice-cream, made some hotel-schooling, some laundry and finally took the night bus (2345) to Buenoss Aires ('Bs As').
Omer is going to tell you in details about Bs As in the next coming entry.
Hope you are not too tired from this entry... [I bet you all are!).
Miss you all,
Tal
** You can refresh yourself from my words, by viewing the entire galleries - pls click on the following links:
Marine Wildlife
Cormorants and Lion Seals
Marine Wildlife & Penguins
Dinosaurs Museum Photos
Sunsets and Reflections
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Pam
non-member comment
Armadillos eat roots and I think spend most of their time digging up my backyard at night!.There are literally thousands (I exaggerate) here in Flroida. Last summer I had a family staying quite a while -usually digging up all along the fence line. Great entry!!! Pam