23rd-24th October: Whale-watching off Peninsula Valdes (plus some Welsh)

Our bus arrived in Puerto Madryn, one of the larger towns in northern Patagonia, on Argentina's Atlantic coast.  As the name suggests, this region was largely settled by the Welsh.  A nearby town, Gaiman, even hosted Princess Diana for a cup of tea.  Puerto Madryn is not, however, the most attractive in the area, so we stayed only long enough to catch the bus on to Puerto Piramides.  This small village is the other side of the bay from Puerto Madryn, on the peninsula of Parque National Valdes.  We arrived at around 11.30, dropped off our bags in our comfortable room overlooking the bay (a little treat), and set out to explore our options for the next couple of days.

View of the bay from our room

The tour agency told us that the main attraction, whale-watching, would not be possible the following day as the harbour would be closed because of a strong southerly wind.  The only option was to take the tour starting at 1pm that day, as there was no guarantee that it would be possible later.  We just about had time to pick up a quick sandwich from a small cafe up the beach before showing up at the agency to be strapped into our ponchos and life-jackets.

Fully equipped (with tractor in the background)

The wind-swept look

We boarded a small boat with around 10 other tourists, all Spanish-speaking.  Amusingly, the boat was towed to and from the water by a tractor.  The wind was already fairly stiff, but the blazing sun meant it was not too chilly on board the small boat.  No more than five minutes had gone before we had our first encounter with the Southern Right Whales that pass away the winter and spring in this sheltered bay.  The whales are curious and friendly, regularly breaching not more than 5-10 metres from the boat.  Our guide explained that all of the whales were mothers and calves, as the male whales left at the end of September.  On one spectacular occasion one of the calves breached only a metre or two from where I was standing, snorting at us in greeting.  This was a far more intimate experience than the whale-watching I'd done before, off the shores of Massachusetts and New Zealand (although the whales there are considerably larger, if I remember correctly).  We toured around the bay for a couple of hours, spending half an hour at a time with several mother and calf pairs.  Obviously we allowed our cameras to gorge themselves, but we also managed to take time just to enjoy ourselves.  Two hours was about the right amount of time, though; much longer and it might have started to feel a little repetitive.

A solitary sea-lion, who apparently refused to join the onward migration

After arriving back at the village, we had a wander to decide what we wanted to do the following day.  It turned out that the heavy wind had affected more than just the whale-watching.  Even the usual tours of the peninsula were not available.  Apparently this was because tourists, based on the mainland, usually did the whale-watching in the morning and the tour of the peninsula in the afternoon.  Without the whale-watching, there wasn't enough demand for the tours.  Since we were in any case going to see penguins, sea-lions, etc. further down the coast, we decided to head off the following morning and get a head start on the long journey south.  

In the late afternoon we went for a stroll along the beach, round to a rocky promontory poking out into the bay.  From there we were able to watch more whales, cavorting in the last of the sunshine, only 10-20 metres away.  The whales wouldn't quite pose directly in front of the sunset for us, but again we gave our cameras a good workout.

This shows how close they were to the rocks were standing on

Puerto Piramides in the background

As the sun was setting we strolled back to the village for dinner -- nothing particularly memorable -- and bed.

We woke the following morning to the sight of waves lapping at the beach, stronger than yesterday but still fairly calm by most standards.  We caught the bus back to Puerto Madryn (a couple of hours later than we'd expected), and then caught the bus another hour further south to Trelew.

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The description of the city of Trelew made by the LP was not particularly appealing: "Though steeped in Welsh heritage, Trelew isn't a postcard city". We therefore hopped on the local bus straight on to Gaiman, also a former Welsh settlement, nowadays famous for its tea houses (Lady Di had tea there).  As indicated by our guide to the Punta Tombo reserve a few days later, the name Gaiman has Indian origins, as a tribute to the Indians who helped the Welsh newcomers.  The tea house our B&B recommended to us was unfortunately closed, so we tried the ones nearby, most of which were also closed.  The only one we found turned out to be much blander than we expected, so we decided to give it a miss and instead went to the nearby bakery and bought two tasty scones.  Later, we looked for a restaurant as again the place we had been recommended was closed on Monday.  What we thought would be a little stroll resembled more of a scavenger hunt, our frustration grew and was only matched by our/my determination to have a tasty meal (after sandwiches for lunch).  At least we got to visit the town.  The first house was rather well-preserved and had been built using grey stones.  We also passed in front of the charming old train station (now a museum), although there were no railway tracks in sight.  The train used to connect the former Welsh settlements to Puerto Madryn, and was built to transport wheat to the market.  Most houses in the village were made of red bricks. Interestingly, a few of the inhabitants we met did have a Welsh look. More on Welsh settlers in Patagonia, click here.  At around 8:30 pm, we resumed our search and found a little restaurant advertising home-made pasta.  I was thinking of running away as soon as we entered, the decoration did not seem very promising.  Even less so was the sound of a microwave... The pasta nevertheless turned out to be ok.  John was very pleased to find that our B&B was on calle Michael Jones.