Penguins and Whales and Dolphins and More Penguins!

If you had asked me, before I left Canada, what I anticipated would be the highlight of my travels in South America, I would have immediately answered: Patagonia. So, despite my desire to stay longer in Buenos Aires, I left the city after five days in order to maximise my time down south.

My first stop in Patagonia was Puerto Madryn, about halfway on Ruta Nacional 3 between Buenos Aires and Rio Gallegos. Why stop at Puerto Madryn? To see animals. Lots and lots of animals.

Panorama of the Beach at Puerto Pirámides and the Golfo Neuvo

I spent three nights in the city, using it as a base to tour Península Valdés and the Punta Tombo Provincial Reserve over the course of two full days.

Península Valdés and the Golfo Neuvo are breeding areas for Southern Right Whales, and, between May and December, whales can be sighted from boats into the Gulf, as well as right off the beaches north of Puerto Madryn. During my whale-watching cruise, the boat was in the water less than five minutes before two whales swam up along side. And this wasn't whale-watching from a distance; we followed the whales (or, maybe, the whales followed us) around for about thirty minutes, getting easily within five metres of our vessel.

A Breaching Right Whale

After the whale watching, we visited beaches with large sea elephant colonies.

Best I Could Do Without a Telephoto Lens

After that: a small Magellanic penguin colony on the far side of the peninsula.

My First Encounter With a Wild Penguin

Penguin Boogie

The next day, I started off by heading south to the town of Rawson, where I boarded a small ocean-going vessel going out to try and spot some Commerson's Dolphins. After about thirty minutes of cruising around in rough ocean swell, trying to fight off sea-sickness, we spotted them. Five or six dolphins spent the next fifteen minutes jumping around, darting past, around, and under the boat at terrific speeds, as forty passengers spun around the deck like idiots (me included) trying to get pictures.

Fast Little Buggers

After getting back to shore, we headed further south to Punta Tombo. This was my favourite part of my three days in the Madryn area, for five-hundred thousand reasons. Specifically, five-hundred thousand penguins. Punta Tombo is the breeding area for the largest colony of Magellanic penguins in South America.

I'd seen Magellanic penguins the day before, on Península Valdés, but that was at a bit of a distance. In Punta Tombo, I walked among them, getting mere inches from the waddling little birds.

I was in penguin heaven.

The Beach at Punta Tombo

Leave Me Alone

While I was touring the Madryn area, I learned that the cities of Trelew, Gaiman and Rawson are considered worth visiting because of the large Welsh populations that settled there in the 1800s. The cities have preserved quite a bit of their heritage, evidenced by the Welsh tea on offer at many restaurants, and street signs displaying names with seventeen hundred letters.

But I wasn't too interested in any of that.

Probably because it's been centuries since anybody's really called the Welsh animals.