Puerto Madryn Whale Watching, Argentina (E)

I arrived in the northern Patagonian city of Puerto Madryn after a tiring 25 hours in various buses. The coastal city and the close-by Peninsula Valdez are famous for their incredible wildlife, most importantly penguins, seals & whales. I quickly checked-in to a hostel and went straight down to the bay where I got the first glimpse of two or three of these huge animals swimming a few hundred meters off the shore.

The real whale encounter would take place the next day as I was booked on a one-day tour across the peninsula, including a whale watching tour by boat in the afternoon. I started the tour early morning with Anna from the Torres del Paine trek and a bunch of other travellers. The amount of wildlife we saw during that day was amazing – the first stop was at a beach where hundreds of elephant seals were resting on land, laying on the beach next to each other. We watched them for quite a while before heading to another beach with a small penguin colony composed of individual couples taking care of their eggs.

The third and last stop of our tour was at the little town of Puerto Piramides where we boarded a vessel and headed out into the Golfo Nuevo to see the whales. It didn’t take long before we were surrounded by the impressively huge Southern Right Whales; around six mothers were swimming in the bay with one calve each. After giving birth, the mothers and calves are staying in the safe waters for about six months before heading down to Antarctica to feed.
The female whales can grow to 18 meter in length and weigh up to 80 tons. Their calm movement in the water together with the noise of sporadic blows of air makes watching them a very relaxing experience. We thoroughly enjoyed the 1.5 hours on the boat and were sad to leave the bay to get back to Puerto Madryn.