Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Puerto Madryn proved to be a bit of a hit for me - after the cold and the wind in the south it was lovely to arrive at this town on the Atlantic coast, set on the edge of a huge bay where Southern Right whales come for the breeding season between September and November each year. It must be an amazing sight to see the huge whale tails from the town beach, but sadly it wasn´t the right time of year for me to see that... However, I did get extremely lucky in seeing lots of other amazing marine (and other) wildlife.
I trailed across town to a hostel that I´d seen in an edition of ´Traveller´s Guru´given to me by my German friend, Lars, in Calafate. "Che Patagonia" turned out to be absolutely lovely, with a really helpful and friendly couple running it, and lots of nice people staying there. The hostel itself was well equipped and even had a balcony overlooking the sea, where we spent some happy evening watching the sunset drinking beers and cheap (but so good)Argentinian wine.
The main attractions in this area were the Peninsula Valdez, and my first stop, which was Punta Tombo. Punta Tombo is the largest penguin colony outside of Antarctica, its now been set up as a national Park and visitors can walk right in amongst the hilarious ´pinguinos´ as they waddle industriously about their business. There´s over a million little black and white figures pottering about between the sea and the nests, which stretch a long way back from the ocean food source. The nests are not mouch more than holes in the ground, ideally sheltered by a bush. The males are responsible for building a nest and maintaining it and they are incredibly territorial, returning to the same nest every year. The females just select a male based on his nest and its location each season, and move in - as it should be I think!
Once penguin actually walked up to me and started pecking and preening at my leg. I thought it was so cute, but apparantly they can be a bit dangerous so its best not to get too close... The noise of the whole lot of them shouting and squaking, chatting to each otehr, calling out constantly for food from some poor overworked parent (in the case of the chicks) is unbelieveable and so memorable. Its an amazing place, I´m so glad I visited it!
Ont he journey to Punta Tombo I also stopped off at a place whre you can see Tomolino (not sure if this its the correct spelling!) dolphins,. They´re beautiful, but very small, bdolphins with striking black and white colouring. They came and played with the boats, swimming under the bows and jumping out much to the excitement of the people aboard. They moved so fast it was almost impossible to get a photo of them unfortunately.
The other highlight in this area is the Peninsula Valdez, which is large sticky-out bit of land with an extraordinary amount of marine wildlife on it. On one day trip I was lucky enough to see sea lions (with gangs of pups being looked after by one juvenile female so that the adults can go swimming for food), elephant seals (big blobby things), dolphins, penguins and most exciting of all was the orcas that we saw at Punta Norte, the uppermost point on the peninsula. Its so rare to actually see them that I could hardly take my eyes off the massive fins gliding along the coast. This place is where the Blue Planet sequence of orcas attacking sea lion pups was filmed... but we didn´t get quite that lucky to see that!!
On the land we also saw some interesting wildlife, the bizarre armadillo being my favourite I think!
I leave Puerto Madryn on a bus for Mendoza - a whopping 25hour ride away, so prepare myself to shut down and ´lose time´on one of the big, comfy buses... Happy to have had such a lovely visit to Puerto Madryn.
- comments