Peninsular Valdes & Trelew
We took a `side trip´from Bariloche to Puerto Madryn for a couple of days – it only took 12 hours on the bus from B to PM!
The main reason to going to PM was to go to Peninsular Valdes, which is famous for its wildlife. Out of season for the Right whale, but in season for Orcas. It also has penguins, elephant seals & sealions there.
The wildlife spotting was, in the end, fairly disappointing. From reading the guide books we had the impression that you could get quite close to the animals, but as it was you were stuck on platforms a good distance away – so couldn´t grasp the fact that males measure around 5.5 m and females usually measure about 3 m. They just looked like logs lying on the beach a good 300m away.
The orcas are famous here for coming up onto the beach (beaching) to catch seals. Whilst we were lucky enough to see them, they were also disappointing, which sounds a dreadful thing to say. The platforms were a good couple of hundred meters away from the main hunting channels & so you couldn´t really see them trying to hunt & we only really saw their fins & caught a glimpse of their side colouring, we were 90% sure they were hunting & beaching, but an unhelpful hill was in the way, so we didn´t get sight of them.
A couple of days around the Trelew area afterwards saw us having a `traditional´ Welsh tea in Gaiman (not very novel for us – sponge cake) and lots of fossils (dinosaurs, penguins & dolphins).
Tags: Argentina, Travel, Trelew
Jenni
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