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Published: March 12th 2005
I'm sure that I've read somewhere that there are very few life events that stick in the memory into old age. If this is the case, then the four of us filled up one of the few slots on Thursday when we visited Peninsula Valdes.
When you last heard from us we'd arrived in Puerto Madryn hoping to see some marine wildlife. The area is most famous for whale watching, but we were told that it wasn't the right time of the year and the only whales we might see if we were lucky were Killer Whales (or Orcas as they are called).
As you'll see from the accompanying pictures (as long as I've been able to add them) we were lucky to the extreme. In fact, no end of four leaf clovers, rabbits feet and horseshoes could have made us more lucky.
Having hired a car and driven just over 170km (most of it on gravel roads - an adventure in itself!!) to an area on the peninsula called Punto Norte we hopped out of the car and wandered over to the cliff face to find a beach covered with sealions. It began to register that they
were a little agitated about something and that's when the fins came into view out in the water. For the next 45 mins we proceeded to watch a group of about 8-10 killer whales take it in turns to swim into shore and try to grab a sealion baby or two for lunch.
It was the most amazing sight, nature unfolding literally 100 yards from where we were standing. Watching this spectacle you could literally work out the strategies of both the hunter and the hunted, and its a deadly game that's probably played time and time again with a variety of outcomes. The worst thing was we actually found ourselves siding with the whales, as they were so graceful and deadly in their approach. More often than not they got their man (or sealion as the case may be) but once in a while one of the plucky little pups managed to somehow escape the inevitable.
Sorry to come over all serious, but just look at the flipping pictures!! They say more than I ever could.
As you can probably imagine, the rest of the day was something of an anti-climax after that. We stopped to
see penguins ("they're just standing there!") and elephant seals ("they're just lying there!") but nothing could top feeding time for the Orcas.
Back at the hostel no-one could believe how lucky we'd been. Not bad for a bunch of unprepared drunken semi-travellers eh! We found it very amusing that lots of the very serious travellers we've encountered in the past month and a bit can only dream of seeing something like that and we literally stumbled out of a hire car into the middle of it! Brilliant.
Anyway, having seen what we came for and more we left Puerto Madryn on Friday and headed down further South. Where to we weren't sure, as we could only get to a place called Rio Gallegos and then we would see where we could get to.
As it turned out, we could get to El Calafate, which is a beautiful little town close to the Andes. From the hostel we can see the mountains, though it's still relatively warm. Over the next few days we're off to see a famous glaciar from which shards of ice apparently drop off regularly. It should be another pretty awesome sight.
Enjoy the
photos of sealion slaughter and we'll be in touch soon.
AC
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anonymous
non-member comment
Wow
What a lucky experience. I don't expect lazing about on the beach will ever be the same! - jof's mum