Puerto Madryn Peninsula Valdes National Park
Today we visited Peninsula Valdes National Park, a short trip in a small group but taking up a whole day. The main attraction is the wildlife, and we were given our money´s worth in what we saw. Two guides, one translating the other one´s Spanish into English, gave us a blow-by-blow description of what we were to see and some of the history of the area. Apparently, Puerto Madryn is one of the richer and more expensive areas to live in Argentina, which wasn´t surprising given some of the houses we had seen along the coastline. However, I still can´t get around the fact that I ate like an absolute king the night before for about 30 potatoes, or a fiver in English money. I´m going to really be begrudged paying four times the price for half the quality when I come back to England.
We started off the excursion with a visit to another sealion rookery - which slightly devalued the reward of our cycle ride the day before, but was still enjoyable as we were able to get a little closer. We were told that the male sealions had up to 15 female sealions and spent his time fighting other sealions to claim their wives. I thus deduced my friend Tommy would make an excellent sealion.
Next stop was to see some elephant seals - which are the ones that look like they have a giant peanut stuck to their face - but the view we had of them was disappointing compared to that of the sealions. I was disappointed to hear that the whale-watching season only ran from June to December, but got my hopes up that we might see a killer whale while we were there as they sometimes come up to shore to teach their offspring to hunt.
We were also happy to see an armadillo pop out from the undergrowth, and I was surprised that it enjoyed human attention so much. It ran around like a puppy as the papparazzi did their thing, before heading off into the undergrowth. We also saw an emu-like creature, but I didn´t think it deserved the paparazzi treatment - must try harder.
The highlight of the day was undoubtedly the pin guins. Again, I was surprised at how comfortable they were with humans at such close range, but thought I managed to get some really good photos. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I´m by far the most macho person they know - including anyone on TV - but the pin guins were so cute they even had me making ´aw´ sounds.
As we got off our tour bus, I thanked our driver. I thought I heard the last people on the bus kiss the tour guides goodbye, which I said was a bit foreward. Kyle pointed out to me that we were the only ones who hadn´t, and had just said, "Thanks for that," and "bye." So we actually looked pretty rude! Typical English.
It might also amuse you to discover that to upload the photos of the trip onto this blog, I had to visit a second internet cafe, as the first one wouldn´t allow me to upload the pictures as it said they were containing adult content! Someone should go tell those peanut-faced elephant seals not to look so suggestible.
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