Watching Whales in Wales in Patagonia

Peninsular Valdes, Patagonia

Argentina

Patagonia is an enormous area pretty much covering the southern two thirds of Argentina. Predominantly flat and dry, there is very little that can grow there and prosper. Much of the land is covered by a thin coating of small, thorny bushes and rough grasses and most of the indigenous wildlife has taken to drinking bottled water. Its eastern edge is fenced in by the steep rise of the Andes mountain range and the western edge is buffeted by the cold South Atlantic. The winds come mainly from the west and drop any moisture they carry over the Andes. By the time the air reaches the atlantic coast it is so dry you will be licking you lips every other second and spending more time than normal thinking about cold beer. The roads stretch away across the seemingly endless steppe to distant horizons on all sides and you can drive for hours without seeing another living thing, save for the scavenging condors. Eaking out a living here is hard and as such not too many people live in the region. The main cash crop here is dust, which is harvested in huge quantities and shipped all over the world to be spread over bookshelves and under beds. You can also buy gravel there much cheaper than back home, which is a handy tip if you're thinking of getting that driveway done. It can be an incredibly bleak place, somewhat like Burnley, but it is also extremely beautiful, so actually nothing like Burnley.

Lets go there, we thought !

(Patagonia that is, not Burnley)

As you may or may not know, I am utterly fascinated by wildlife and natural history. I will be glued to the TV whenever there is a documentary on about any kind of fauna, be it the migration of the wildebeest or the gill parasites of atlantic salmon. Many years ago I saw a David Attenborough programme called Life on Earth showing Orcas, AKA Killer Whales, almost beaching themselves to snatch young seal pups directly off the beach. Those scenes were filmed on the Patagonian coast of southern Argentina and ever since then I have wanted see it.

Our first port of call then was to be Peninsula Valdes, where these programmes were filmed. More specifically, we were to stay in Puerto Madryn, a few kilometres away from the peninsula. Puerto Madryn was originally a Welsh settlement at the end of the 19th century, presumably founded by people sick and tired of the crap they had to put up with at home simply for 'being Welsh'. The influences are still visible in the street names and the fact that almost every local claims some degree of Welsh ancestry and proudly displays Welsh flags on their walls and photos of the national rugby team circa 1983. Now the town is built on aluminium mining and tourism (those obvious bedfellows) and pretty it certainly is not. It looks a bit like Hull but without the class!

What generates the tourism is the nearby Peninsula Valdes, which from June to December is the calfing ground of the southern right whale, so called because no left-handed specimen has ever been found! It is also the favoured breeding grounds for southern elephant seals, sea lions, magellenic penguins and home to the famous orcas. Unfortunately the orca/seal/ouch-that-hurt season is only during high tide from Feb to March so I guess we'll have to come back for that one. You can also scuba dive here, but it is expensive and the same effects can be achieved by donning a wetsuit and climbing into a bathtub of almost defrosted vegetable soup. Save your money and grab a tin opener.

The distances between the various spots we wanted to visit within the Peninsula Valdes national park were fairly hefty, so we booked onto a day tour of the park and a boat trip to go whale watching in the enormous bay created by the peninsula. On the day, we were outside our hotel at 7am sharp as instructed, waiting for the bus. Unfortunately the lady who ran the hotel forgot to mention to us that the tour company had called to say they would not be there until ten past eight. It was okay though as we only waited in the freezing cold for 45 minutes before going back inside and having breakfast.

First stop was at a beach on the northeast tip of the peninsula used by southern elephant seals and sea lions for breeding, battling, basking and barking. From what we could tell seals like to sleep, eat and fart, which makes them not unlike me. They also have big eyes and make people go 'Ahh' so in that respect they more resemble Cara. Watching a four tonne bull elephant seal flop its way across a beach at speed looked very much like me trying to get to the chip shop before it closes. The next stop was to see the penguins.

Magallenic penguins are hilarious. Of course, all penguins are funny, but these seem doubly so. Penguins are built for swimming and 'fly' through the water using their wings, which are shaped as close to fins as you could imagine. When they are swimming, legs are an incumberence and as such they are very small. What makes these daft birds so funny is that they like to nest in burrows on the sides of vey steep hills. Watching a small penguin scramble and hop up a gravelly hillside is pure entertainment and I could watch them for hours. See them in the water however and it's a completey different story. They zip through the water like torpedoes and they can turn on an exclamation mark. So essentially penguins are walkers like we are swimmers: awkward, ill-adapted and comical. By the way, penguins are cute but by crikey they whiff, or at least the beach does when they are on it. And what does it smell of? Shit. Fishy shit to be precise. Fascinating animals, terrible house guests. While we were here to see the penguins, we also had a couple of quirky little armadillos running around our feet scrounging for scraps. If you knelt down in front of one it would immediately run over to see what goodies you were about to dish out, so I can only assume people are feeding the little buggers, which ultimately does them no good whatsoever. Apart from allowing them to forget how to fend for themselves, quite a few keel over from heart disease or colestrol problems by the time they are 6, which is about 35 in armadillo years (or maybe I made that up, I can never remember). Howdyhoo, armadillos are even funnier than penguins, if such a thing is possible. I imagine if a chihuahua ever mated with a slinky, then put on a hairy suit of armour, it would look just like an armadillo. They also wear flat caps, which proves they are originally northerners!

On our way to the next vantage point we were very lucky to see a pod of orcas swimming together near the shore. On the east coast of the peninsula there is a thin tongue of land which runs parallel to the mainland for several kilometres, leaving a long, thin channel for all sorts of wildlife to live protected from the open ocean on the other side of the tongue. This is where we saw the orcas and apparently they visit regularly to train the youngsters in beach snatching techniques (although I was suspecting our guide was making up more of this than I am). We had lunch overlooking another beach coated with elephant seals and sea lions (although pinnipeds, they are not true seals because they have external ears, although I had stopped believing a word he said at this point). Then onwards to Puerto Piramides for the whale watching.

Once there, Cara, myself and a freakishly tall Dutch fellow were segregated away from the rest of the group because we had special needs or something. We were put on a different boat from the others and with hindsight I'm glad we were as we had a fantastic experience. The boat we were in was quite small and the whales seemed a bit more comfortable coming close to check us out. We also had a couple of whales breaching the surface close to us as well. As you can see from the photos, having a 40 tonne right whale leaping out of the water a few yards from you is a darn sight better than a getting kicked in the shins. We were out at sea for a little over an hour, and we saw quite a few whales up close and personal and many more leaping out of the water off at a distance. Back on shore we discovered the rest of our group had gone out on a big catamaran and hadn't been able to get too close. Result! As an aside, if any of you think it's cruel to bother these animals and that they should be left alone, the following makes interesting reading. Once upon a time the whales would breed in both the north and south bays created by Peninsula Valdes. When the southern bay became a rather busy shipping lane thanks to the nearby aluminium mine, the northern bay was made a protected marine reserve and no shipping or powered craft is allowed in the bay. All the whale watching boats are centred on the southern bay. Now here's the rub, almost all the whales that once to resided in the northern bay have moved to the southern bay and nobody has the faintest idea why. Maybe they are just insecure and crave the attention, who knows? As you can see from our staggeringly impressive photos we were able to get very close to the whales and they are very impressive animals to be around. I had an excellent viewpoint on a raised platform at the back of the boat to get some photos. At least I thought it was a good spot until the above whale vented his blowhole right in front of me and covered both myself and the camera with whale snot.

Whilst in Puerto Madryn we attempted to visit the Oceanographic Museum and tramped across town to see it. Unfortunately, this being Argentina, it was a museum that was closed to the public. This seems to be happening a lot in this country. Supermarkets closed on Sauturday afternoon, museums not open to the public and restaurants closed at normal meal times. It can be quite frustrating trying to get anything done when every town essentially closes down from 1pm to 5pm and restaurants are deserted 'til 10pm, bars deserted 'til midnight and nightclubs empty until 2am. It's almost like somebody took a census and asked 'when would you like to use these services?', then chose to be closed for the hours requested. Seemingly following the great buiness maxim 'This job would be easy if it wasn't for all those customers!'. There, got it off my chest. With the museum closed to the masses, we hopped on a bus to the next town of Trelew to visit their world famous paleaological museum, and that was fantastic. Our first hour there was spent watching a BBC Horizon documentary in English, which was quite odd. But the displays at the museum were great, as Patagonia is famed throughout the scientific world as having some of the most fertile fossil beds on the planet (or artificially created tests of your faith, if you happen to be a wacky creationist!). From Trelew we took the bus back to Madryn, where we took a coach back to Trelew on our way to Rio Gallegos. There's expert planning for you.

ghgggh

Off to Chile next to do some trekking, which apperantly means walking long distances without the aid of motorised transport. What a bizarre concept!

ghggh

Mik

Woof!