Watching Wales

imaginary whale

We wake after a 15 hour bus journey to another rubbish film. The scenery has definately changed, no more lush forests of the north, we are in patagonia proper, flat, arid, endless and very beige. Its very windy here too & has a high suicide rate, so does Tarifa in Spain and thats also very windy & beige. Anyway no time to mourn the jungle those large bulbous Southern right whales are down here waiting just for us.



First a pit stop Puerto Madryn, Chubut district, a massive shallow, windy u shaped bay, site of the first welsh landing isn iTT?

Ohw luck heres our davVid noow...



Our campsite (high above the bay) though windy was quiet & had stray cats doing acrobatics in the rubbish bins for evening entertainment.


tripod with cat

The next morning we throw all our shit into a hire car and hit those rediculously straight & long deserted desert roads. Luckily we get upgraded to a 1.6 ltr chevrolet. Dave drives first & I watch the gargantuan sky & scan the horizon for any signs of life....nothing yet. Its been about 8 years since Ive been behind the wheel but theres no place more apt for a re-introduction and it all comes back easily, great to be driving again,

andale! andale! arriba! arribra!


On route we pop into the visitor center for a bit of education about the whales & stuff. These whales have hands hidden in their flippers, see......



After a couple of hours we reach the home of the whales, Puerto Piramides a tiny sea side village. Its oddly reminiscent of a small cornish cove with a cluster of ice cream, coffee & souvenir shops round the bay entrance & not much else. The campsite is in the dunes & we immediatly get the car stuck in the sand driving round it. Its a basic site but has personal BBQ`s & is only 10 strides to the beach, perfect.


stride eight

We´re loving camping with a car, such a treat.

Down on the beach theres a whale watching party leaving straight away, so we hot tail it to catch up with boat being towed out by a tractor. We were lucky as the weather had stopped boats getting near the whales on the previous 2 days, but today we have perfect condtions. Only Spanish spoken unfortunately, so not as informative as it could have been. But I think we must have seen 15 to 20 whales in the distance, every direction you looked a tail or jet of water was in view.


token tail shot

There was only us and one more boat taking people out, we were pleased the whales (and us) werent being overcrowded. Southern right whales stand out as they have 2 blow holes & the water spurts out in a v shape. We can tell the size of the whale by how deep a sound the expelling of water makes, its really cool.

We get very close to 3 of them and watch as they silently glide by, occasionally flipping their tails in the air to make vertical dives. For a while the mother & calf play right on the bow of the boat, turning and twisting around each other on the surface with their flippers a flapping. Then the calf swam under the bow & he was so close you could see his whole body though the waters surface & the whale was in full view. At one magical moment we heard them singing to each other, really tempting to just dive in and swim away.

We stayed out for 40mins, then reluctantly had to leave. Saw a sea lion pop his head up to say hello on the way back.

Tuna is the way to a cats heart & back at camp we named our new friend orka, here he is....




He`d mew for a while when we went inside our tent & follow us to the loo, faithfully sitting outside till he could trot back to camp with us, bless! We (in turn for his faithfulness) fed him pasta and chased the dogs away.


An American couple Rob & Jenny take a fancy to our car, & we to their contribution so now we are 4 for our trip to see the elephant seals. The next morning we depart having not had to pay for the campsite as its out of season, nice! Some people that were working in the village or on the whale boats were living at the site, they had built walls out of sand bags round their caravans & rigged up complex lighting systems. Heres one......





Rob & Jenny turned out to be "super nice" and full of great tales, they pronounced Chile chiLAY but none of us are perfect, I for example am particularly succeptable to drafts (thanks Oscar).

Dave and I shared the testing driving, you had to concentrate hard on the gravely roads to avoid skidding and stones firing up at the lovely silver paintwork. After an hour of joking that there really were no animals in the whole of patagonia we see some. First herds of shy Guanacos, then these strange creatures (jenny called freaks of nature, a little harsh really) , they were kinda half rabbit half deer. The odd Rhea or two & lots of sheep, one went bucking and leaping all the way across the road in front of us as if it could kick & injure the car, funny sheep!

heres some beige photos.....


Guanacos


freaks of nature


Rea

We stopped at a spot where magellan penguins nest & saw a handful clinging to the cliff. I thought they looked rather sad but I expect this bleak windy place was their idea of a peachy spot (glad I have a wind cheater). They didnt seem to mind people peering at them from the safety of the other side of the fence.




lizard sex also seen here

Next stop the elephant seal colony, we have just missed the mating season so no blubber blood bath for us... fortunately. Shame we wont see any males though, heres Dave with a stuffed one to show you how large they are, and this is only a female.


seperated at birth.

We wind our way down to a path above the beach and below us are a couple of hundred sleepy ladies and pups. They look dead to be honest, (the peeling malting skin doesnt help) then you see the odd one scratch her belly with those ultra dextrous flipper fingers.


click to see larger version for cute faces

Next you notice the twitching, flexing of tails, the odd grunt & sigh. Some are in sardine formation & jostle for position with the odd retaliating bark revealing the blood red insides of their mouths. It all gets a bit too exciting when one lollops off for a swim, fat rippling across the missile shaped body(they have to rest along the way its too much effort in one go). Or you see a couple of young pups play duel at the waters edge. On closer inspection they have the cutest individual seal faces and dont have to do much to be quite enchanting.



The males can have around 6-15 in their hareem on average but one of the guides tells us the record here was a hareem of 150! that must have been one fit blubber bucket.

Theres a lonesome penguin who seems to be lost, he`s wandering across a seamingly endless pebbled beach. Every now and again he stops and looks around "where are they?" We watch him & are glad at least when he finally makes it to the cover of the bushes.

here he is......



and heres a funny looking very nice armadillo we met on the way back to the silver dream machine.



3 hours driving back on even bumpier roads: we pass 2 salt lakes but couldnt really get close, a bit of a missed tourist oppotunity there, finally we hit tarmac, halelughlah!

Back at base we drink beer in the sunshine and listen to Robs mad tales about meeting hells angels: quote of the day "Im here for a good time not a long time!"

Afterwards we watch the sun set on the beach & Dave twats about on a big pole.






again daves drawings alive!

Rob suggests a parrella & we cook some fine steaks covered in chilli & black pepper, strangely they Argentinians dont have a taste for spices I assume the beefs so good they dont want to mask, but we do. Rob cooks garlic & squash over a blazing wood fire & with the ipod on shuffle we consume beer until sleepy. Me & Mrs Jones comes on sung extremely well by my old boss Richard, a nice treat for the campsite!

The next morning Dave & I go off to visit one of the largest colonies of maggelan penguins in the world. Its a hot and tedious 3 hour drive & we dont have masses of time there due to a tardy start but are so glad we made the effort.

On the way we try to avoid squashing the numerous tarantula spiders that have crept onto the road side to sun themselves.





They have made a path right through the colony and the penguins mostly carry on as if we are not there, theres thousands of them here. We see them nesting, sleeping, cleaning, ejecting flourecent poo missiles, swimming, we see their chicks, them having sex (at perhaps too close a quarters right in our way on the path) & quite a viscous bloody fight to boot.



I think they nest in the same place year after year so some have to cross the path and patiently wait for a gap in the human traffic before waddling across, its funny how different individual waddles are. You are not meant to stop on the bridges as the penguins use the underneath as a highway and they dont like walking under if you are there, of course there are big groups of tourists that annoyingly do. We also see a couple of lads with beers?? not really the right place for getting drunk. A shame but the colony is massive so we are only disturbing a small part of it.


they look pretty chipper dont they?

The best bit of the day was sitting on the cliff edge looking down at them entering and leaving the water. At one point a little fellow dives in & has what looks like a most enjoyable wash. Turning on his back & splashing the water over his dirty white belly while vigorously scrubbing with his flippers. Then twisting over and torpedo swimming through the water, surfacing, then repeating the process. He waddles out at one point but decides he could be cleaner and plops back in again.

movie coming soon... or is it??? yes it is..... but is it really?

Have to dash back to aviod driving at night but dont quite manage it. Dave has a hairy hour driving in the dark, its busy & some cars dont have lights on at all, plus there are no streetlights on these long desert roads. Make it back safe and sound, he´s a fine driver.

Next stop the glaciers, both extremly excited............