South America and South Africa

Peninsula Valdes is in northern Patagonia and known for its excellent wildlife. There are populations of among others sea-elephants, southern right whales and penguins. My friend Ingo recommended to go there and I booked a flight and a rental car to explore the peninsula. When I went there I had my first surprise – Patagonia was flat with no hills, mountains, or trees. Until then I always thought the entire Patagonia would look like Tierra del Fuego with its snow-capped mountains and clear blue lakes, but no, for hundreds of miles only scrubs in the plains.

When I arrived in Puerto Piramidos, the only village and with 400ish inhabitants rather tiny, I immediately liked the place. It was sleepy and relaxed but I learned that it gets considerably more crowded on weekends. There are several whale-watching operators and I decided to break my “never again a whale-watching-tour-resolution” I made after my previous three, exclusively disappointing whale-watch experiences (if I haven’t repressed successfully the memories of other disappointing trips). To give you an idea: when I went to the beach I could see more whales from the shore than I have ever seen on all those tours together.

The first day I made an in total approx. 130 miles long dirt-road-trip around the island joined by a lovely young couple from Germany hitch-hiking in South America. We had a great day taking our time to watch the wildlife at the various beaches, which are, however, not accessible for human beings. We saw many sea-elephants and sealions, albatrosses, penguins, and on our way to the beaches loads of guanacos (looked to me like vicunas = wild lamas) and even an armadillo crossing the street right in front of us.

Later in the afternoon our car had a flat tire and after changing it with the help of a park ranger we decided to return on the shortest route given the gravel roads and the lack of an additional spare tire. In the end this incident was the greatest luck as we repeated our stops at the viewpoints we were before. There was a bunch of people standing at the penguin spot entirely ignoring the penguins. When we came closer we saw them as well: some orca whales, also rare to watch on the Peninsula, on their way up the natural canal. And while we were waiting patiently it became even more spectacular when one orca attacked and killed a sealion/sea-elephant resting on the shore of the canal. It was really exciting to watch how the orca was sneaking through the canal to make its deadly attack. After the sealion was towed into deeper water and killed a flock of seagulls indicated where the feast was happening.

The next day I decided to make the whale watching tour after checking the weather with one of the tour operators. It promised to stay fine for the day but windy for the day thereafter so that I made the tour against my initial plans on that Sunday. Again I was very lucky as an unusual high concentration of plancton in the water at one spot led to an unusual high concentration of whales, dolphins, sealions and penguins. Sometimes the different species were even interacting among each other.

It was amazing how the whales were breaching, showing their dorsal fin, feeding plancton, curiuosly observing our 12 m boat or diving underneath it. The whale mothers (about 15 m long) were guiding and protecting their babies (about 6 m long) and it was cute how they always held physical contact unless the mother was diving. Sometimes it even would have been possible to touch these huge animals because they were that close to the boat. Right before we left five whales were surrounding us and it was almost stress as I couldn’t decide where I watch first. When we went back to  Puerto Piramides I had a enormous smile on my face and it was time for a new “never again a whale-watching-tour-resolution” – this time, however, because it cannot get any better!

Before I went to the Peninsula Valdes I was somewhat anxious whether it can compare with the wildlife of the Galapagos Islands I had seen only seven weeks ago (time flies). As the focus this time was more on the sea-mammals, particularly on the southern right whales, it was again amazing and surely an once in a lifetime experience not to be missed. Muchas gracias, Ingo (if you read these lines)!

(see also under photos “Peninsula Valdes”)