Peninsula Valdes

One of the best things about aking a tourm as opposed to doing it yourslef is all the extra information you get from the guides..... So we took a tour of the Peninsula Valdes

First off a little about Puerto Madryn. In the 70s this was a sleepy little beach and fishing town on Golfo Nuevo of about 6000 people, then the Aluminum plant was built. By the 1990s the town had grown to over 60 000 people. Then in 2001, when the economic collapse in Argentina happened, this place still propsered due to the aluminum plant as it was exporting abouit 85 % of its output. So more people arrived daily, and whil ethere has not been a census the estimate is that there is now over 100 000 people here. I can´t even imagine how the infacstructure kept up with that growth
The main industries here are Aluminum, fishing and tourism

The Valdes peninsula is about 90 kms outside of town, and is an ecological reserve home to the protcted species of the Patagonia Penguin, Sea LIons and the only Elephant seal colony is South America.

First stop was the information centre whoch probably has the cleanest public wasrooms I have ever been in. Then we headed to Punta Norte to see the Sea Lion colony. We had hopes of also seeing Orcam as they come in to feed on the seas lions, but no luck with the Orcas. The Sea Lions were interesting, very noisy creatures lying in packs along the beach. At this time of year the pups are just startingto swim. The pups reminded me of little puppies running around on the beach.
Apparently the moms head to sea to feed for about 3 days and then come back to feed the pups, whi hang on the beach in their absence. They were pretty noisy creatures, but you could watch them for a ages, probably my fav of the day.

Next up the Patagonia penguins. This is a large colony of penguins who arrive here around August, lay their eggs, and hang around until they hatch in Dec. By March the babies will be ready to fly, the adults will molt and then at the end of March they head to Brazil where they spend the rest of the year. The penguins were hanging around pretty close to where we were (I think some were posing for us) they were prety neat.

Next on to Punta Cantor to see the elephant seals. There were not a lot around, mainly young ones lying soaking up the sun. These are massive creatures, once they are full grown, they get to 4.5 m long and 3000 kgsm This happens at at the age of 25 o 30 years of age. They looked very awkward moving around, kind like the old worm dance, maybe that is why they did not move very much......


We also had a chance to try the Mate ritual with Hugo, the guide. Mate is a hot drink, basicaly a strong tea they drink out of gourd like cups. There is a whole ritual about making the Mate and then sharing it. What was toughest for us to get oyr heads around is that everyone drinks from the same cup through the same straw. (Cabbie we were laughing picturing your face at this.....)

Next up a long bus ride further south today