Where are the whales?

Trip Start Jun 21, 2008
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Trip End May 11, 2009


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Flag of Argentina  ,
Monday, November 24, 2008

After another long bus ride I arrived in Puerto Madryn in pursuit of the southern right whale, sea lions (cos I hadn't seen enough in Galapagos) and anything else that looked interesting.  After dumping my stuff in the hostel storeroom, as I wasn't able to check in that early, I went out to meet up with some friends from the UK for coffee.  Gareth and Alanna had been in several of the same cities as me during the previous few months but always either just before or just after me so it was great to sit down and catchup on travel news, exchange ideas and recommendations and also catch up on general stuff.  .  It was a brief catch up though as Gareth and Alanna had to head off to the bus station to catch their bus down to Ushuia (a very very very long bus ride) but it was worth the quick cup of coffee.  Although I am loving meeting all these new people, its also great to just catch up with  old friends sometimes too

From the city of Puerto Madryn, its fairly easy to get to the Peninsula Valdés which is a wildlife sanctury for birds and marine species but my focus was to see the whales and the elephant seals 01 - lunch at the beach
01 - lunch at the beach
 .  On my second day, I went off to see the whales.  It was quite a big boat that I went on and was rather full but they were very good about making sure that everyone could see clearly.  We spent about 2 hours out on the water watching 2 different pairs of Southern right whales.  The whales were having a bit of a lazy day so there was much by way of fluking or breaching but they did come quite close to the boat.  After that we got back into the bus and went off to the elephant seal breeding ground.  Although both of these activities were rather touristy and very busy, I was pleased to see that people are kept a long way away from the breeding ground so hopefully the impact on the seals is limited.  With regard to the whales, I'm a bit more concerned about the impact of tourism as we did seem to approach them a bit too closely and they did seem almost too comfortable with the boats, however,  as the whole area is a wildlife sanctury, I am sure that the people there are keeping a close eye on the impact of tourism on the area.

After spending time with whales and elephant seals, I decided to spend some time under water swimming with the sea lions.  Although the dive was a very shallow dive, only about 5 m down, and the visibility was really poor, it was a great experience.  When I eventually got my buoyancy sorted out, I just sat on the sand and waiting for the sea lions to come and investigate.  Because the sea was very murky, it was only possible to see them very clearly when they were within about 20 cm of me - but I loved it.  We weren't under for very long  as a storm was brewing and the dive team didn't want to be caught out in the middle of the ocean in a little boat in the middle of a thunder storm.  I did enjoy the dive, although not the lack of visibility and still think that I need to do a lot more diving to get the confidence levels up.

Puerto Madryn was a fun town but after seeing the wildlife, I was ready to move on and to head further south to El Calafate.
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