We came back to Argentina today. We pulled into a small city called Puerto Madryn. I had never heard of this place before we started planning this trip. As we pulled into the port, I could see that the main attraction could not be the city itself. It looked like a bleak industrial town with a half-hearted attempt to put a few cheap holiday high-rise apartments on the far side of the city. Neither the cruise ship nor Viator had offered tours of the city itself. Instead, the main attractions appeared to be Peninsula Valdez, a wildlife area just north of the city, and Punta Tumbo, a breeding ground for Magellanic penguins.
John and I had opted for the first choice, Peninsula Valdez. Norwegian offered two versions of this trip, the usual big bus tour and an “exclusive” version with a small group in a minivan. We opted for the second even though it cost a bit more. The meeting place for the tour was in the lounge at 7:15. But as some of you know, it is not always easy to get John going in the morning. And when we reached the lounge it was already 7:20. They pushed us to the front to the line and we tried to get through security as fast as we could. But when we arrived on the pier, we learned that our tour had already left. We pointed out that we were a mere five minutes late. The shore excursion agent did not offer an apology, but did not blame us, either. Instead, he announced he was switching us to the big bus tour and refunding the difference. John was upset, and I was not happy either.
It took a while for the bus to fill up. We had a guide who spoke reasonably good English, though it seemed like she had mostly memorized a script filled with an almanac of not particularly interesting fact about the city. We learned a great deal, for instance, about the local aluminum industry and how many cubic meters of metal were produced there each year. It was pretty boring, but it was mostly designed to distract us until we arrived at the nature reserve.
As we left town, I finally understood why the southern part of Argentina is so empty. The part of Patagonia, which is really the largest part of the region, is in the rain shadow of the Andes. It is a basically a desert.
We stopped briefly at an interpretive center at the entry of the park. There was not much there, just some restrooms, an observation tower, and a boardwalk path with some interpretive signage. The plants were not the same as those you see in the intermountain west, but they were similar enough.
We learned from our guide that Peninsula Valdez was a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I have already expressed my opinion that this honor is too freely bestowed, but certainly the area is a significant wildlife sanctuary. Perhaps the most important reason to this designation is that Peninsula Valdez is a breeding ground for the Southern Right Whale. However, the whales do not come here until later in the year, so we did not have the chance to see them. As we drove towards our first stop, we saw some guanaco.
These are related to the llama and the vicuna, but their fur is considered the least desirable. While all the tourists on the bus found the animals fascinating, the drive and the guide clearly regarded them as mundane and even irritating as Virginians might think of deer.
We continued on to our first stop, a colony of elephant seals. We could only observe these animals from a distance.
But the optical zoom on my camera certainly came in handy.
While there were a few bulls around, mostly we saw cows and their calves.
We stayed here for about a half hour, but as it was raining most of our group went back to the bus quickly. A couple refused to even leave it!
Another half hour in the bus brought us to our second stop, a small breeding ground for Magellanic Penguins. I just could not stop taking pictures of these guys.
Because this was a nesting area, there were lots of young penguins.
I could have stayed here for hours taking photographs — I have dozens more on a flash drive — but it was time to move on again.
Our last stop was at a colony of sea lions. Again, we could only see them from a great distance, and like the elephant seals, they mostly just lay there.
This final stop was located on one of the last remaining ranches on the peninsula. It had an Old West look about it with a horse
and a poor armadillo that legions of Chinese tourists seemed intent on photographing.
There was a small restaurant at this last stop, and I think if we had been on the “exclusive” tour we would have had lunch here. Instead, as we drove back to the boat they gave us box lunches with virtually inedible empanadas.
