The Natural SeaWorld

Francesca and I arrived in Puerto Madryn on 25th November after a nice overnight bus journey from Esquel through the raised, flat Patagonian steppe. Founded by Welsh immigrants from the tea clipper Mimosa, and named after one of the founders estates in Wales, the settlement grew around one of the Chubut provinces railway, and now is a major tourist destination due to its wildlife.

We first asked at the bus station about some of the tours available, and found out that they were all extremely expensive, so decided we would sort them out later. After walking 10 blocks to our hostel, we were greeted by an obnoxious lady who was extremely annoying and pushy – NEVER check in to El Retorno Hostel.

Unfortunately our camera charger had broken down through overuse, so we had to spend most of the day looking for a new one. We found a battery charger, and also, after visiting numerous agencies, found El Chalten travel, through which we booked all of our subsequent tours due to their professionalism. Patagonia is not very easy on the wallet though, and none of the agencies are wiling to haggle, probably because they all fix the prices – they all quoted the exact same prices, with very similar tours on offer. The prices are fixed to the blue dollar rate; the agencies check online and recalculate their offers every morning. If you don’t have dollars to exchange you end up being charged almost double for everything you buy.

Once we got back to our hostel to charge our camera and get ready for our tours, the hostel owner sidled up to us like a hideous spider (we were locked in to staying for three nights as we had booked online) and started asking us, passive-aggressively why we had not booked through her. We even caught her listening to our conversation when she was hiding behind a door and we were in our room.

Not to be put off, we waited for the tour to start the next day (the 26th), waiting outside the hostel, because we were told by the El Chalten agent that our hostel owner would often tell tour guides that turn up to pick up guests, that those guests were not known at the hostel and turn the guides away when the guests book a tour not through the hostel. What a repulsive character.

Our guide turned up roughly on time (half hour late is on time for South America), and we jumped in a minivan which started out of town. Our destination was Peninsula Valdes, a UNESCO world heritage site, and important nature reserve. We had planned to be here at just the right time to see as many animals as possible. The end of November is the perfect time to see animals here because it is breeding season, so we hoped our plan would pay off.

Access to the Peninsula is controlled at an administrative center which doubles for an information center for tourists while they count the money paid for entrance. All the tours stop here at the same time, it is like a huge convoy of minibuses and coaches rumbling through all together. The center is very informative and well put together, but the tours do rush you through with little time to digest any information.

The peninsula was first populated by humans about 4800 years ago, where they hunted the numerous guanacos, rheas and marine animals that were there. Semi-nomadic, they were of the Tehuelche tribe, and it was this tribe that unwittingly gave the name to the region. They wore huge boots stuffed with guanaco fur to keep them warm, and when the Spanish saw the huge footprints on the beaches, they called these tall indigenous peoples Patagons, which means big feet. At least that is the legend (no pun intended, get it? Leg-end?). However, the etymology of this word is unclear, but on the old Spanish and European maps we saw, drawings of giants in this region were common, so the name, Patagonia, stuck.

It was King Charles III of Spain who ordered the settling of the Patagonian coastline. All the way up and down the coast, explorers and adventurers would follow Magellan and Drake’s footsteps and help settle the region so that Spain could claim the land for its own. Previously unexplored, the San Jose Bay to the North of Peninsula Valdes became a refuge for Juan de la Piedra’s ship, and he had a fort built on the coast. The indigenous Tehuelches burnt this to the ground in 1810.

Undeterred, cattle and sheep farmers kept populating the area, which caused catastrophic environmental damage to the guanaco grazing grounds, causing numbers to dwindle. This in turn badly affected the native population and their numbers also declined. A lack of potable water in the area meant that the settlers had to dig their own wells, often up to 100 meters deep.

A railroad and salt mining of the salt flats (40 meters below sea level) located in the South of the Peninsula, bought new economic prosperity to the colonists. By the 1900s, a new port called Puerto Piramides was used to move up to 12000 tones of salt a year.

Not content with ruining the land and killing off the natives, the Argentine government then moved on to sea lions and seals. Seal lion hunting was encouraged from 1914 until 1958, when an estimated 268,000 seal lions were killed for their fat and their hides. The men would beat them to death with big clubs to save on ammunition.

Too late for the indigenous people, but welcome news for the animal kingdom, the government started to protect this region in the 1960s, particularly with new laws to prevent over-fishing.

Marine and land mammals are still found here, sometimes in plentiful number, depending on the species. Before the Spanish came there were many more animals than there are now, and it would have been a paradise for those initial settlers, or biologists who visited. However, you can still find families of guanaco and rhea, maras (long-legged rabbits), foxes, skunks, armadillos and rodents. In the sea are fur seals, sea lions, elephant seals (with strange long noses, hence the name), Commerson’s dolphins and Southern right whales. Various crabs, birds, snakes and lizard are also represented.

We left the center and drove to our first stop of the day, Puerta Piramides. Nowadays it is full of tourists, hostels and kiosks – its heyday was in the 1920s when all the salt, seal fat, hides and sheep were bought through to be shipped to Buenos Aires. We were given a poncho and a life jacket each and waited for a boat to take us whale watching! This was something I always wanted to do, and now we were finally doing it! How exciting…

We walked to the boat across the sand and boarded it via a set of steps provided, and then given a short safety demonstration over the noise of the wind. We kept our arms inside the vehicle as a tractor puled the boat out to sea, and we were on our way. We had heard that the previous day the boats had had to travel a long way to find whales because it was the end of their breeding season and the new mother’s – the only whales that were left, were already heading South to the cooler waters of the Antarctic.

Sighting! Within ten minutes we spotted our first whale. It was so close to land we could have spotted it from shore with a good set of binoculars! There is nothing like being next to them in a boat though. They are so tame and curious they come right up to the boat – so close the captain has to be careful not to hit them. They actually get their name from their curiosity, when whalers would call them the ‘right’ whale to hunt – hence Southern Right Whales. It was a mother and new calf. The calf was almost the size of the boat, the mother must have been 15 meters long! The whales are dark colored with grey calluses around the head and body which sets them apart from other whales. The calluses can appear in unborn baby whales, but their evolutionary purpose is unknown. They can appear white due to whale lice being present – gross.

Whale lice aside, the majesty of these animals is remarkable – the power they have in the water, alongside a kind of gracefulness that belies their size. Amazing. They come to both gulfs of Peninsula Valdes in June, when thousands of individuals come to mate. Multiple males mate with a single female, and it is because of this that males have the largest testicles of any animal ever known, each one weighing it at an incredible 500 kilograms!

The whales mate, conceive and give birth here during the spring and summer months, until December. In December the weather is too warm for them (they are extremely fatty), so we were lucky to see them in late November before they headed off to the Antarctic. We must have seen half a dozen mothers each with its own calf. Some of them even performed for us, jumping almost completely out of the water. This was a spectacular sight to see.

There have been an unusually high number of deaths of whales since around 2003 in Peninsula Valdes. Scientists now believe that is because of the kelp gulls that attack them. Kelp gulls have razor sharp beaks which we saw pecking at the whales, eating the fat from their living bodies, making them bleed and get infected. Whale calves feed at the surface of the sea, from their mothers milk. When the gulls attack the mothers often submerge, not allowing the caves enough time to feed, and they weaken and can either die, or get stranded. There are strict rules for visitors and residents now in terms of recycling household waste, because it is believed the high number of kelp gulls is in relation to the rubbish thrown away in the land fills. Hopefully, once the government and local populace (not to mention tourists) can get this problem dealt with, the number of gulls will decline, helping maintain a natural equilibrium for the whales.

The boats all radioed each other to let each other know where the whales were – there were half a dozen boats allowed out at once, and numerous enough whales. They told us it was massively more populated with whales a few months earlier, but I’m glad we saw the whales we did. We were worried we were not going to see any! Mothers can often wait until the last moments before beginning the trip to the Antarctic because great white sharks and even orca are often lurking off the coast waiting for the baby whales to show themselves.

We also took the boat over to a small colony of fur seals and king cormorants (which I thought were penguins at first). We were out for well over an hour whale watching and the whole experience, though expensive for backpackers, was well worth it, especially if you have never seen a whale before, like me.

Back on dry land and we were given an opportunity to look at some photos of ourselves a local photographer was pushing, but it looked like it was going to take so long we gave up waiting. After piling back into the minivan, we all set off again towards our next stop, across the Peninsula. On the way we saw large groups of lesser rhea, the South American emu that is half the size of its Northern cousin, the greater rhea that we had seen in the Pantanal. Females all stay together in a big group, whereas the male looks after the young, even sitting on the eggs from multiple females until they hatch. We were lucky enough to see a group of younger rhea with the male guardian.

We finally got to the other side of the peninsula, at a point well known for elephant seals and other animals, called Caleta Valdes. We stopped at an estancia, which sold some food (expensive), and had some trails that we walked. The first of these trails was up to a viewpoint at the top of a cliff overlooking the beach which had elephant seals sprawled all along it. These indolent loafers spend most of their time lounging around in the sun, it seems, and with the males growing up to 5 meters long, at 4000 kg, who is going to argue?

The seals start arriving in August here, to breed, when there is a lot of fighting between the males. They raise themselves up and smash down with their teeth, often resulting in heavy blood loss for both combatants.  This can also cause harm or death to unwitting seal calves who get in the way. The harems can have up to 130 females in it – and these days, an increasing number of seals each year shows how conservation can be so beneficial for the natural world.

The calves had been born and were all waiting around for the moment when they had to leave shore. They are weaned for less than a month before being abandoned by their mothers. This is the season for orcas, or killer whales to patrol the shores looking for the pups, and that is what every tourist their was secretly hoping to see!

We did see Southern giant petrels; birds that reminded me that they were all related to the dinosaurs, with 2 meter wingspans. Whalers used to call these birds gluttons, or simply stinkers, because they were so aggressive. Other mammals like armadillos were not to be seen today, however, but we were soon jostled into the minivan again, and, in a huge speeding convoy, we took off up the coast. We stopped where a large group of people were all looking out to sea….orcas! Killer whales!

These awesome creatures, so unhappy in captivity, and so amazing in the wild, were patrolling the coast. Two orcas, swimming South to North, possibly on the hunt for stray penguins, or seal calves.

We watched them for a long time, even though they moved quickly, until they were out of sight. So lucky! We were told they had not been seen by any group for over 5 days, and then another 3 days before that! Cool…

It is only here, Peninsula Valdes, where orca have been known to beach, or strand themselves, to grab prey such as seals from dry land, when hunting. This is only been observed by several orca, distinguishable by their dorsal fin shape. Projects to document and name the orca have been underway for some time now, for conservation purposes.

We hardly even noticed the poor penguins right in front of us whilst all the excitement was going on. Magellanic penguins nesting on the Patagonian cliff tops. More about them later.

We drove back across the peninsula, this time taking the Northern route (the road loops around the peninsula). Most people fell asleep, it was a long day, and definitely worth it. Our guide was great, in Spanish and English, and we saw all the animals that we set out to see, which is really lucky.

The next day, following some confusion with the tour agency, we got the guy who worked there to pick us up in his own car and take us to join the tour group that had left already. It was kind of our fault that he thought we were not going on the trip, as he had no way to contact us. However, it worked out OK as he decided to bring us all the way down to where the next trip was starting – Playa Union, 90km South of Puerto Madryn.

After the tour agent dropped us off, we jumped into a new ship, a large power boat, and we headed off past the shrimping boats and sea lions waiting for the shrimping boats to return, and headed out to sea. This trip was to visit the spot where Commerson’s dolphins are regularly sighted. Again we lucked out, and the dolphins appeared straight away. They love playing around in the bow waves of the boats, swimming under the boat and jumping out of the water. They are the worlds smallest dolphin, at just about 5 feet in length. Colored black and white, they are shaped like porpoises but reminded me of tiny orcas. They live in shallow waters between Argentina and the Falkland Islands. Another population of the same species was found in a small area around an island in the Indian Ocean, but the two populations never leave their respective areas, and never meet. Weird.

The dolphins were really cool little guys and jumped a lot. I noticed that as soon as one started jumping, they all seemed to do it, even the ones far away playing around another tour boat. The dolphins would even swim upside down, or on their sides, and spin out of the water, like they were doing tricks, at the awful institution of SeaWorld (watch Blackfish – you will never go to SeaWorld or anything like it again).

After an hour or so playing with the dolphins, we returned to the shore – another awesome experience, and I almost got to touch one of the dolphins, but they moved so quick! They don’t mind being touched, not like the whales which I would never try to touch, because they get spooked and submerge if you get that personal.

We got in the minivan, where the other tourists reluctantly moved to allow us to sit down, the pricks. Our next destination was a couple of hours further South, at Punta Tombo. A protected area since 1972, Punta Tombo has been a breeding ground for Magellanic penguins, over 400,000 of them to be precise, for over 90 years. The Tombo peninsula was formed in the Jurassic era, and there have been pre-historic signs of human life found in various archaeological sights here.

3km long and about 600 meters wide, the point is densely populated by penguin rookeries, or nests, which they have cleverly dug under thorny bushes into the sandy clay. From September the penguins arrive from the North. May to August they are living in the warm waters off Brazil, surprisingly, and we saw the results of this in Uruguay with many dead penguins ending up on the beaches there, possibly due to oil spills, or fishing.

Eggs are laid in October, and we were just in time, now late November, to see the eggs and chicks in the hatching stages. The chicks are so cute, covered in grey downy feathers. They won’t leave the burrow until January. Not surprising when there are so many dangers around. We saw rodents (Southern mountain cavy), clumsy guanacos who might stomp a penguin by accident, and caracaras, scavenging birds of prey who eat the eggs.

Amazingly each penguin lives most of its life solitarily. However, they are monogamous and mate for life, so when they reach the shore, separately, the male arrives first and rebuilds and cleans the same nest he uses year after year. Fights over nests can be fatal. When the female turns up, a few days later, she calls to her mate and they find each other within all the chaos of 400,000 penguins all fighting, and calling out for each other. After mating, they lay two eggs.

The parents take it in turn to look after the eggs or go out and catch fish to feed the youngsters. Most of the rest of the time is spent cooling down – so they are either in the nest on the eggs, or lying down with flippers outstretched. Some penguins have to walk over a kilometer to get to the water and back, so prime real estate is nearer to the sea for the more dominant penguins.

We found them hilarious, waddling this way and that way, looking like waiters. Some of them would just stand and stare, in fact, one hill looked like invasion of the zombie penguins there were so many just standing there. Creepy.

While humorous on land, they are graceful in the water. With speeds up to 24 km per hour, that is where they truly fly. We observed them in the water from a viewpoint at the end of the trail. The trail is mostly a raised walkway, but with some points where, if a penguin is crossing, you have to give them right of way!

Punta Tombo is the largest penguin rookery outside of Antarctica, and they even discovered a 25 million year old ancestor (paraptenodytes) along the coast in the region, so penguins have been coming to Patagonia for millions of years, and to Punta Tombo itself since 1920!

We saw a beautiful mockingbird making some amazing music, a guanaco face plant after running into a fence, and caracaras fighting kelp gulls in an aerial battle for penguin eggs (which invariably crashed to the floor). The strangest sight was how the penguins were all crying! We found out they drink fresh and salt water, and glands under their eyes relieve them of excess salt. The penguins here were awesome, and if you have never been to a penguin rookery, this is definitely the one to visit.

We returned to Puerto Madryn for a final night in the awful hostel owners place, before moving the next day to a nicer place. After moving our stuff we decided to look around the town and see some sights. First up, was the Natural Science and Oceanography Museum (also called the Man of the Sea Museum).

Annoyingly, this museum has no English information whatsoever, so I cannot really recommend it. However, with our improving Spanish, we managed to glean what the different sections were about. The first floor was all about the different myths and legends relating to the sea, from the indigenous Tehuelche culture and the European perspective. The Tehuelches flood story sounded very familiar with the added fact that it was a meteorite that caused the flooding, probably from a tsunami. All of the Europeans stories were from men being cooped up together on the high seas for too long! With king crabs (we resolved to eat one soon!), giant squids, and whale skeletons all on display, we could easily see why so many sailors believed in myths and monsters.

A section on the photo identification project of the 3000 Southern right whales that visit Peninsula Valdes was interesting and showed some great photos. We still had not heard any whale song though, and the museums whale song audio was broken.

My favorite thing in the whole museum was a little stuffed baby rhea. It was so cute, and only just bigger than the egg it was next to! They also had quite a few stuffed armadillos. I’m beginning to think armadillos are all dead in the museums we go to!

With beautifully preserved fish fossils, the second floor, dedicated to science was very interesting. Still nothing in English, but we did see some old biology books which incorrectly described some of the animals in Patagonia, to the point where the drawings of sea lions give them lions manes, etc.

There is also a nice lookout from the top of the museum, and some information about the indigenous people’s local knowledge.

We left the museum and wandered down to Puerto Madryn’s beach. We walked the pier, which still is used for cargo ships, as well as for the huge ferry boats of tourists who stop off from Buenos Aires on their way to Ushuaia or Antarctica, to the South. We booked ourselves on to a snorkeling tour, again, with El Chalten, for the next day, and then jumped on the bus to head around the coast, to two museums located at the site of the first settlers caves.

The bus dropped us off, and we walked a kilometer to the first museum, el Museo del Desembarco, or the Landing Museum, because this is where the first Welsh settlers landed. Being an Englishman in an Argentinian Welsh museum was going to be fun, so we went inside.

The museum is very well set up, with excellent information and exhibits. We learnt how the settlers survived by, at first, staying in caves near the shoreline, and then, having salvaged some shipwrecks, how they build their first huts and homes with very little. Most of the colonists came from Merthyr-Tydfil (Wales) in 1865. The museums premise was that the settlers had come to escape English persecution (those damn Brits!), and the Argentine government wanted to secure the land by getting the Welsh to populate it in their name, thus making a claim on the land over any claims made by England (damn those Brits!). As one of those Welsh guys was a knight of the realm (Sir Love Jones Parry), and he had inherited wealth and a successful political career back home, not to mention having been educated at Oxford (for free), I don’t buy this ‘poor me’ story. When they left, they played and sang ‘God save the King’, but with pro-Argentine lyrics.

Objects showing a different past have since been salvaged and saved, like huge boiling pots used to melt the seal fat, and harpoons used to kill elephant seals. Also on display, were translations of letters from an Tehuelche cacique, or chief, who wrote to Lewis Jones, one of the founders, to tell the Welsh they would need trade with them as they owned the land. He was one of the first to arrive to prepare the land for the first wave of colonists (161 people on the Mimosa).

The colony had its own Constitution written up, and they even had their own flag, a mixture of the Welsh and Argentine flags. It was not without its hardships though – one founder, Edwin Roberts, dug a water well before the first group of colonists arrived but was left at the bottom to die by the Spanish laborers he had contracted, possibly over disagreements about food. He escaped, but the well has never been found although it was used for 20 years.

The caves that Roberts dug out for the first shelters have been excavated, though, and you can leave the museum, and take a little walkway down to the shore and view them, although some have been washed away now.

We left the caves and walked up the hill towards another museum that was opened in 2000. The ecocentro is a large wooden building in the Welsh colonial style, from which I got most of the information to write this blog post. It is the Fundacion Ecocentro who put together the project to photo ID all of the visiting right whales.

We did learn about the Patagonian Shelf, and the Burdwood Bank, and how these raised plateaus on the sea floor interrupt the Northward Antarctic circumpolar current (which is caused by the Earth’s rotation). This area is the front for the Southern Falklands current (cold) and the Northern Brazilian current (warm), causing a proliferation of phytoplankton – small animals that subsist on CO2 and sunlight – which cover thousands of square kilometers of sea. This is turn brings a large number of krill which are the main source of food for all of the big mammals, including the whales that we had seen.

The ecocentro is an awesome place where you really learn a lot about the animals, sea, tides and natural cycles – basically the science – behind everything you are seeing on the tours in the region. It was here where we heard our first ‘whale music,’ or a soundtrack made with the sounds the whales naturally make in open ocean. They even had a lookout, from where we saw some more whales in the distance in Puerto Madryn’s gulf, and a living rock pool, with lots of cool local animals like starfish and crab.

We left, and were lucky to be able to hitchhike all the way back to the center, without having to wait for the bus, and deal with its stupid payment system. Before we went back to our place, we got together some food in the form of two half meter long hot dogs! Really cheap too, and real tasty.

The next day, the 29th November, we left early to go on our last tour – snorkeling with sea lions! This tour has been offered for 7 years, and is supposed to be strictly regulated, although when we did it the park ranger never turned up to supervise and we just did it anyway.

On our walk to the diving company, Abramar Buceo, we saw numerous whale in the bay. Most of them were still, at the seas surface, which is how they sleep – what a treat! Imagine living in a place like this!

We arrived and were given our wetsuits, which we changed into. We quickly learned we were the only ones going, so that was nice, and within half hour a boat arrived from the North to pick us up from the beach.

This company had pretty good gear, and I never felt really cold on the tour, they also give you hot tea and biscuits, and a jacket on the way back. On our way out we saw some sleeping whales up close, and the captain took extra care not to hit them or disturb them.

We rode the boat along the Southern coast of the gulf to Punta Lomas, another reserve which you can visit by land. This is a huge sea lion colony, and they discovered that these sea lions, like puppy dogs, really like to play with humans!

We were given our safety instructions (an instructor is also with you in the water observing), and we got in the water. Within a few minutes I saw my first sea lion swim underneath me. It was not a scary experience for me, but I can see why some people take a while to get used to it. Luckily I never saw one of the males – they are huge, and would have freaked me out – but the females and pups were very playful. I suggest getting to see this quite soon, as I am not sure how sustainable this activity is. It might not be offered forever.

The water was not very clear, and the sea lions do dart about really quickly, so both of us feel like we could have had more time in the water. Another tour boat had turned up and I felt like the sea lions attention was distracted to the other group of half a dozen people, but at one point, a sea lion pup came to me and was playfully gnawing on my hand. I made a fist and it put my whole hand in its mouth and would not let go until I pulled away. The sea lions were really cute and fun to play with, they especially love gnawing on hands, cameras, flippers and even snorkels.

Before we knew it, it was time to go back to the boat. From aboard we could see a male sea lion scare off lots of pups into the water. Shame that did not happen when we were there, we would have gotten more attention.

We zoomed back the way we came, and this time, we were lucky enough to see many more whales, even two white calves. Only 4% of male calves are born white, turning the usual blacker color as they mature – and we saw two of them! How lucky!

We rested for the rest of that day (after another hostel move to a place a bit further out of town). We had certainly seen all the animals we wanted to see, even up close and personal! November is definitely the right time to come here.

Our final day, the 30th November, we decided to head down to the neighboring Welsh town of Trelew (named after Lewis Jones, ‘Tre’ is Welsh for town). We had come through Trelew twice already – once on the way to Puerto Madryn from Esquel, and once on our return from the dolphin watching tour. There are many buses there and back, so we hopped on one in the morning. The main attraction for us was a museum called MEF. A short walk across Plaza Centenario from the bus station and you are there.

MEF stands for Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio, the Paleontological Museum of Egidio Furglio. This museum is actually a research and science center where visitors can not only see the permanent exhibitions which take them back in time, but also watch real-time as scientists research the latest fossil findings.

It is a real expensive museum, as most of the museums are in Patagonia, but it is one which is worth it. An explanation of the geological time periods and contextual explanation of the animals that evolved within each one, we found it fascinating to learn the story of the planet’s fauna by moving back in time from man (the present Quaternary period), back to the oldest period (Arqueozoic period).

Each room dealt with an important period, showing the indigenous humans of the glacial Neogene period, the huge forests and insects of the Paleogene period. The real draws are the rooms in the Mesozoic era, the time of the dinosaurs. Dinosaur tracks, eggs and skeleton model dioramas were all on display.

Back to the Paleozoic era, and soft-bodied animals adopted calcium carbonate into their outer layers which formed the first skeletons. Vertebrates soon followed in the sea, and then on land. We also learnt about several major extinction events, some of which bought life on Earth to the brink.

The most interesting fact for me was how the longest period, the medium Proterozoic, lasted thousands of millions of years. It was at this time our atmosphere was formed by green algae which began photosynthesizing for the first time.

We had seen a ton of dinosaur museums in Patagonia – this is where a large percentage of fossils are found. Neuquén and MEF are must-sees for budding young archaeologists.

We got back to Puerto Madryn, and the next day we left for the Southern most point of Patagonia. A 24 hour journey, with numerous bus changes and two border crossings laid in wait. We were going to Ushuaia, the end of the world.