Puerto Madryn de Argentina. Sabado, 9 de Octubre.

One overnight bus trip and the temperature rose 20 degrees. So there we were arriving in Puerto Madryn in our jeans, icebreaker and puffer jacket to a balmy 27. Fair to say we were pleasantly surprised and quickly hauled out the summer get-up.

Puerto Madryn is a small city on the Argentinian coast, I was saying east coast initally but as its their only coast, thats really not necessary!
The attraction here from June to December is the Southern Right Whales (ballena's) that come to give birth and rear their calves up for the migration south.

The one thing we struggle with every blog entry is the photo content as a) we remain trigger happy tourists and b) everything is just  too photo-worthy! So this entry is no different and is full of pictures. Photos will do this experience much more justice than words could describe.


Peninsula Valdes sits just north of Puerto Madryn and is a wildlife reserve for whales, penguins, sea-lions, seals and in the right season, orca's. Rather than spending all day in the bus driving around Peninsula Valdes, we opted to catch the public bus to Puerto Piramide so we could soak up the sun and focus our day on the whales.

Peninsula Piramides - whale just off-shore showing off.

Mother, approx 17m long.



Madre y bebe.

Again, the weather fairy was on our side (bless her) and the bay was like a giant pond.
The boat takes you out for 1.5 hours and just sits amongst and follows various whales around.
We would not be exaggerating to say that we saw 50+ whales and it was unbelievable as for moments you just didn't know which one to watch. 

I think all onboard were both surprised and nervous by their inquisitiveness as they swam around and directly underneath the boat numerous times. All around us, tails were flapping and fins banging on the water while the mothers watch on and potter about. The noise alone of the mothers inhaling and blowing out their blowhole is amazing.
I found myself saying, 'this is the best thing I've ever seen'..........for probably the 8th time this trip!

This year they have counted 214 calves, with as many mothers in the bay with them. They cannot trace the males as they are swanning around somewhere, but they believe there are 500 whales in this bay.
This would've been great to know pre-boat trip as I perhaps wouldn't have been so nervously thinking, I hope we see a whale!! Little did I know that we were in for a treat.

almost made eye contact.......



One of the most beautiful sights in the world, right next to the boat!



This whale posed to perfection for this one!





As we didn't know much about these whales, after the excitement of the day we consulted wikipedia for some info.
These whales can't cross equitorial waters as they are too blubbery and can't regulate their body temps enough, so they migrate from Antarctic waters to Argentina (NZ, Aus & Africa).
You boys especially might be interested to know that these big guys have the largest testicals of all mammals, weighing in at up to 500kg each!!



Had to celebrate our whale watching excitement with a glass of wine, that 
quickly became a bottle and snacks after a spanglesh conversation with
the owner who was proudly wearing his Kaikoura Whale Watching shirt.

The following day we hired bikes and pedalled to Dorradillo which is a big bay 17km north of town where a lot of the whales also choose to hang out. At high-tide they can be seen meandering 50m off shore.
As we arrived the day was cloudy and the whales were considerably sleepy but true to word, were just offshore. As the sun came out the whales slowly woke up.

Mother showing of her white belly and baby poking nose out to see whats going on.


The next photo was almost scripted and couldn't have been better timed. For two hours the whales had been mellowly swimming so we decided to head back, as we got up to leave I said to Matt, 'right now, all we need one to breach just out there..........' Sure enough, 5mins later while jumping on my bike I took one last glance backwards and saw this guy leaping out of the water next to his friends. Thankfully it was a multi-repeat performance which gave me enough time to get the camera back out.
Pretty amazing to see and hilarious as each one decreased in height and size as the poor fella tuckered out. Fair enough as lifting up to 80 tonnes out of the water like that would be a fair struggle.

These photos are all whales but Peurto Madryn itself was a beautiful low-key and relaxed seaside town. Our scheme of wandering to find a hostel on arrival failed us as we didn't realise it was an Argentine public holiday weekend and everything was solidly booked. So we were forced to splash out on a B&B we found with a vacancy.
Made a dramatic change as we went from a tent to an overnight bus to a B&B which really was quite lovely!!


We missed camping so much that we cranked out the gas cooker in our B&B room.

From PM we took another 19 hour bus trip to the big smoke of Buenos Aires, for no doubt a very different experience to what we have had over the last 2 months.