In the area of Peninsula Valdes (October 11 to 16)

One of the main topics when talking about Peninsula Valdes are the whales. However, everybody you are asking, and every trip adviser you are reading, you will get different information when it will be the right time in the year to see them. We started this part of the journey in Puerto Madryn, a city of around 80.000 inhabitants and a gateway to the national parc “Peninsula Valdes”, which is around 80 km away from it. From here many tourist buses are going to the national parc. Our first task to solve in Puerto Madryn was to fix the windshield after it was hit by a stone and the crack was crowing constantly. After consulting a Peugeot workshop we got the clear advice not to change the windshield, as it will be not the last instance on these roads. We got the address of a small car workshop, which did the repair within an hour the same day.

Done this we went to “Punto Prismatico”, a beatiful beach on the way to the Peninsula Valdes for staying for the night and we were alreay lucky seeing the first whales in some distance.

It is the “Southern Rigth Wale (Südkaper)” coming here after giving birth and therefore you can see normally a mother with a baby in the water. However, the “baby” is already 5 to 6 meters long and around 1500 kg in weight. Besides some locals who come for fishing or taking a walk, you have the beach more or less for your own. However, water temperatures around 10 degrees and air temperatures around 15 degrees are not really nice for swimming (but we did), therefore taking walks on the endless beach, seeing a dead whale baby, a snake and other interesting things was more on the program.

Regarding the whales it was even getting better at Punta Flecha, 10 km away from Punto Prismatico. Both in the evening and morning we saw a lot of mother-baby-duos and they came till 5 to 10m close to the shore.

It was fantastic, even if you have to wear all off your clothes for standing hours in the wind outside! After that we went directly onto the Peninsula Valdes to the village Puerto Piramides from which the roads are starting to marked spotting points and all the boat tours for whale watching are starting from. Even if the whole peninsula has an area of approx. 3600 square kilometers, only 5 gravel roads are existing on which one can drive with the own car. They are connecting several observation points over distances from approx. 50 km, where you can see armadillos (Gürteltier), sea elephants, sea lions, penguins, and if you are lucky also some orcas. Unfortunately, the orcas we didn't see, but all the others were more than great. Especially the gigantic male sea elephants with their specials sounds and movements are really impressive.

Inside the parc another technical problem at the car showed up. Due to the vibration on the “wellblech” gravel roads, one of the battery connection cables lost contact and the engine did not start anymore. In the first moment while standing in the middle of nowhere, a 100 km from the next village, this caused some stress. However, with some improvisation we were able to start the car the next few times, before leaving the peninsula and fixing it properly.