Peninsular Valdes - Day Two

Day two of our Peninsular Valdes experience found us trying very hard not to acknowledge that it was daytime in our outrageously overpriced chilly tiled room. We had neglected to ask what time check out was, so I crept out at 9:30 and was promptly told that check was at 9:30. Darn it! We didn't even have time for shower. Swiftly bundelling everything back in the car I was tempted to do a runner on the dastardly skinflints, but figured this would be very bad for future Karma.

We decided we would knock up our own brekky as we had planned to do before we realised what a ridiculous idea camping in these temperatures would be (the car display said it was -2 when we first got in). We headed up to the nice lookout lay-by above Puerto Pyramides. The view was stunning, but it was quite windy and therefore super chilly.

Clairy got some lush piccies.


Here I am watching a pot that never boils (because I didn't check the fuel in the stove).


Nice pooofy hair.


'Come on pot - boil damn you!'


Clairy pranced around with the camera.


'Yeah hi! Some of us are trying to make brekky here.'


A couple of Patagonian mockingbirds came right up to us and would have pecked into the bag of rolls if we hadn't shooed them off. Cheeky buggers. Very handsome mind.


The human windbreak (hair by Donald Trump). The fried egg rolls were bloody lush though, particularly with the hot tomato sauce from Mendoza, a quality addition.


It was a beautifully bright morning.


After we'd had brekky we headed back into town to discuss what we should do with this glorious weather. It didn't take us long to figure this was the day we should probably motor off round the rest off the peninsular as it was unlikely to be this clear again.

Before we reached the dirt road (which would take us 400km around the reserve) we passed this pretty little shrine. Clairy went and investigated and found that it was full of all kinds of offerings, from bottles of water to fags and beer to pictures of horses. Those crazy catholics eh.


The gravel road. It felt quite crazy taking an immaculate brand new hire car out on this gravelly sandyness but I did really enjoy it. As Clair said earlier, there was a definite Colin McRae Rally (computer game) edge to it, and there was hardly any other traffic. I kept my speed pretty low though as we didn't want to miss any of the wildlife. This did mean I was overtaken a few times, but most people were fairly curteous and didn't hammer it past spraying us with stones (though a few did).


Looking down towards the first salt lake we passed, the Salina Grande. There was bugger all about apart from the occasional Estancia (sheep farm). The distances seemed much bigger than we had imagined.


A windmill/water pump.


You can just about make out the salty deposits on the ground.


After about 2 hours on the dirt road we reached the first point of interest. It was called Punta Delgada and was/is a sealion/elephant seal colony. Sadly there wasn't much to see when we got there, apart from the stunning view.


And there was one big mumma elephant seal down there. Oh hi! She was just sleeping in the shade. I imagine you probably don't need too much sun when you've got that much insulation.


The view on the other side.


What's this? A shadow picture!?


A managed to get this nice pic of a passing crested caracara (looked up later, just in case you were thinking I'm some genius naturalist).


The sea was a lovely colour.


Clairy snapped a couple of pics of the info boards that were there, that were about the elephant seals so I could quote some interesting facts. They are creatures of some amazing extremes. The females can weigh up to 900kg, the males up to 4000kg! They can swim down to up to 1500m below sea level, and hold their breath for up to 90 minutes at a time! When the mother is first feeding her pup she can lose up to 13kg a day, and the pup can put on around 4kg a day - what hungry little buggers. Also when the females are in season the big alpha males can have a hareem of up to 130 females and may mate with as many as 15 different females in one day, as well as seeing off his competitors. They must get well knackered.

After this we headed on to our next point of call at Punta Cantor. On the way I had to suddenly stop various times for some mad dashes to try and get wildlife piccies. Clair did well at spotting I have to say, but often the beasties were a bit quick for us.

These enormous emu like birds called the lesser rhea were always pegging it away by the time we had the camera out.


Some parts reminded Clair of Dartmoor.


Lovely views on the way.


These curious little fellas were a definite must that we had to spot. They're called Patagonian Cavy and have a particularly indearing white line round their little bums. They pegged it off shortly after this pic.


Punta Cantor had a couple of skulls for size comparisons. This first one is an elephant seal.


And this is a sealion.


There was a trail heading down the sandy cliff face to the beach (which is beautiful in itself), where at various times of the year there is a huge elephant seal colony.


There were some nice sand formations on the way down.


Sadly, as before there was just one lone mother. This time we were quite a bit closer though and could see just how huge she was. She was sleeping soundly occasionally blowing large raspberries.


Extremely round.


A lovely specimen, but I was a bit sad to not see any proper giant males.




From here we followed a pretty trail down towards the Caleta Valdes, a half closed estuary that used to be used by ships to shelter in and occasionally pick up wool from the sheep farms. If you look at the pic below in full size you can just make out the arm of an anchor of a schooner that was wrecked trying to enter the estuary to escape a storm.


Now the whole area is a protected nature reserve. Here's a small family colony of sealions appreciating the gesture.


It was such a beautiful day. Can you tell we're enjoying ourselves?


The Caleta Valdes estuary.


A close up to try and show the various piles of sealions


After this we decided we should probably head back as we still had a good 100km of gravel roads to navigate and I didn't fancy it at night. We stopped at a viewpoint whilst still on the same estuary and Clairy snapped these stunning pics.


Gorgeous colours.


The sheep were of the merino variety and have lovely furry teddybear faces.


On the way back we spotted some more of the lesser rheas and got a slightly better pic.


Pretty much every time we spotted the guanacos Clairy had to get a pic.




The evening light was stunning.


And Clairy snapped this just as the sun went down.


The above pic is about all I could see for the last 20km or so of the gravel road. It was a little bit hairy, particularly when the gravel got quite deep and you would start to slide around but I'm glad to say that we made it back to town without injury.

That night we found a much cheaper place to stay in Puerto Pyramides and the lady who ran it even had a gas cooker outside that I could use so I managed to do my camp cooking whilst we had somewhere nice and toasty to eat it. We also drank the super lush bottle of wine we had saved from Mendoza. A great ending to a thoroughly fab day.