Whale of a time in Puerto Madryn


Puerto Madryn arrival was early, and despite the very comfy semi cama bus ride, we and the various other travellers looked appropriately disheviled and tired getting off. We sat down for some breakfast and were joined by some of the fellow travellers from Holland and Switzerland. They had met in Mendoza and were a fun bunch who had just completed their medical degrees so were having a bit of fun before the “real world”. We then found out it was a long weekend in Argentina and the hostels were pretty much all booked up and we as usual, did not have a booking. Oops? We headed off to find some accomodation and even though everyone said it would not be possible, found a very acceptable small hotel in the town centre with a nice clean room available for once more, less than it would have cost us in a hostel.
Still tired we mooched around town and then met the rest for a few drinks and chat. We passed the afternoon in high spirits before heading out for some dinner. The dinner turned into an epic card playing evening which ended up in a club at two am, partiyng in Argentine style. Needless to say, the next day was slow and we took it easy wandering around town on our own enjoying the beeches with the great reflections of the buildings on the sand and ducking into the odd café to avoid the rain showers while keeping an eye out for whale spouts and breeches that are fairly common along the entire coast. The reason for visiting the area for tourism is primarly the wildlife, the extraordinary easy of whale watching here,penguins and Southern Sea Lions. We looked at the distances and the costs and for once it was cheaper booking a tour than a car for two of us. The tourism here relies heavily on locals coming down from Buenos Aires apparently so prices are kept fair. The tour was a round trip of 400 km plus, an hours bus trip and covers a very wild peninsula. The guide was funny and had an endless supply of information which was really nice, and ironically he wore a Japanese Whale Study t shirt… One of the first things he pointed out was the tide range differential between the two parts of the peninsula which differ by up to 8 metres in height across a 40 km land stretch; whales pods take advantage of this and follow the krill around apparently. We were there there just after calfing season so after seeing alsorts of interesting animals that hop like rabbits and look like deer, large birds similar to the Emu and a scuttling armadillo we took a walk along the coast line for a good hour. The sea lion colonies were terrific, stretching along the coast line huge bulks of males guarding their hareems. We noticed a difference to the Californian ones, the snouts on the Californian ones are more pronounced and trunk like.. and I think perhaps a little bigger?
The landscape was terrific, huge sand cliffs dropping from raised beaches indication of lots of eustatic rise {how awesome to see text book stuff in reality…who is a geek?} and massive sandy beaches on which the humungous sea lions were sunning themselves. There were also loads of penguins running around, which made me laugh as they looked like the penguins in from a certain cartoon.
So.. onto the main bit of the day. WHALES. Southern Right Whales to be precise. The boats leave from a tiny hamlet which is overun and entirely populated by tourism businesses. No piers have been built and tractors push out boats into the water once they have loaded up on trailers. The arrangements are interesting, and very efficient. Apparently it is very common to have whales off the shore but we saw none. The boat we got onto was a nice size, but rammed with tourists, I made sure I had a good space by getting on first and it really paid off. The masses of photos I took of flukes and breaching whales were great and the whales were just majestic to watch. The calves came to visit followed by their mothers which gave me loads of opportunities to just watch, but then also take even more photos. The whole day was topped off when our guide took the van down another dirt road following the coast and we stopped on a beach to watch them close to shore doing things like “handstands” where they bash the waves with their tails in a vertical position. Having worked for research teams in Argentina on penguins and whales, and a real fountain of knowledge, I was very pleased to have been introduced to the guide.
So we spent another day pottering around and then got to the bus station undecided on where to go. At the bus station we met an Irish couple who were talking about Ushuaia which had been a must see on the trip for me, but was seconded due to other fun things like diving. I decided to bite the bullet and go, so we headed onto a bus with some fun Irish and close to 40 hours on a bus to go. MT