When we got out of the car it really was sooo windy it took your breath away...and bitterly cold. We walked down the small trail to find a small colony of South American sea lions. The males having a large furry head, sitting alone and rolling their heads to the sky, whilst the females had babies close by.
Wiji made use of the last people's pesos in the telescope...they couldn't brave it either! I had a look, unfortunately the telescope was pointing into the wind, so my eye nearly blew inwards.. eww! Wiji is actually wearing his cargo shorts under his trousers in a bid for more warmth!
Looking in the opposite direction down the coast..mmm, no one seems to be about.
Two males below, the one on the left seems to be the alpha male, the other more juvenile.
The coastline here charts the area's geological past dating back several million years, when the cliffs were the sea bed. There are fossils and shells galore exposed in multi-layers, the wind whipping the sand away.
We quickly hopped back in the car to check out another viewing point El Mirador, where there seemed to be a manned station. We didn't see any elephant seals or sea lions here sadly, but lots of very wind burnt succulents.
Looking back down the hill to El Mirador and the coast line of Penninsular Valdes.
The cliffs plummeted off into big ravines.
On the outskirts of Puerto Piramides some interesting housing, pretty much anything seems to go here, these seemed to be some of the more planned out examples. We liked them!
Oh hi gorgeous boy, with your fleece ear muff-headband thingy...totally does the job!###
We were going to have a lovely walk along the beach, as you do. However we hadn't quite taken the windchill factor (whatever) into account...although everyone else had, because the beach was deserted! We gave it a miss and I continued with some Facebooking with some 'old skool' mates...exciting, and we blogged it up for the afternoon. In the evening Wiji did another pasta delight and we continued our wine tasting, unsupervised, buying a bottle from the local garage, lol. It was good though!
The next morning after opting to turn the radiator off (it had a melted plug) for the night to avoid a fire, lol...we were really chilly in our room and made an early morning escape to catch the sunrise.
Some comedy signage.
The open (paved) road.
In the distance you can see Isla de los Pajaros. This is a protected island and nesting ground for many types of birds, but is not accessable to the public.
We nipped back off to the visitors centre to check off the wildlife that we had seen and have one last read up about the area.
I love this illustration. It was first published by George-Louis Leclerc of Buffon (1770-1788) in his complete works of l' Historie Naturelle. It's an engraving from the second half of the century, by an unknow artist.
Here's Wiji comparing his beard with the Southern Right Whale's beard (baleen from the inside of the whales mouth), in the 'you can touch' part of the centre. The baleen was very flexible to the touch, but hard and fiberous too.
Quality signage! When we saw this at the start of the trip, we knew why the hire car people had been so keen to tell us about the penalties of rolling the car over... no need for us to have taken it personally then! lOL.
Getting up super early gave us the opportunity to head on from the visitors centre and visit several observation points along the coastline of the Golfo Nuevo, where the whales come right up to the shore line...we had our doubts that we would be lucky enough to see this...
Our first stop at Cerro Prismatico gave us these beautiful views and we saw several whales breaching in the distance.
Looking over the cliff edge...very good visibility.
Cerro Prismatico looking towards Playa Garipe.
A flock of seabirds...
Surely the perfect spot for some elephant sealions?...But no. Boo.
Our next stop was Playa las Canteras. Here we could immediately get onto the beach. Other people were already there...and so were the whales, in force! Sooo close to the breaking surf!
We could have walked out into the sea and practically touched them...god it was tempting! It would have been amazing to have had wetsuits to do this. But this was only available if you had a PADI ticket. Snorkelling would have been ace, though!
Here you can really see the furrows of the flippers on the right and part of the body on the left.
The whales were swimming upside down close to the shore on the pebbles to exfoliate themselves...no, I'm not joking! This is actually what they do...
Here's another, but up the right way, literally meters from us!
A couple of whales here. A mother and calf.
It was so amazing that we followed a group of whales along the shore line and took some videos! They were everywhere, breaching in the distance too. It was so incredible!
Here's a vid of the beachfront action, with sound no less!
It was hard to leave, but we made one last stop at the recommended beach for whale watching Playa El Doradillo...a lovely beach, but no close action like the previous stop. This was probably just as well especially as we had to get the car back!
Off we went back to Puerto Madryn. We were both very pleased that there were no problems giving the hire car back despite our 3 days of off roading. We were chuffed we did hire the car rather than do a one day tour because it gave us loads more freedom and time to see everything at our own pace.
On our way out of Puerto Madryn...via the bus terminal, of course...who should we see?! LMAO...oh god of course a giant big daddy elephant seal...stuffed and looking quite worn away in places!
Look at how big it is!!! Admittedly it doesn't look real, but hey, I'm no expert on taxidermy!
So in the end...we did see one! LOL!
1 comment:
Video fottage of those exfoliating whales was just amazing. Almost felt we could touch them! Glad you got to see a giant elephant seal eventually. xx
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