Peninsula Valdés

I got up at dawn to join the tour, taking along my backpack. I wanted to be dropped off at the station at the end of the tour to continue to Trelew immediately. I had some facturas left over from the day before for breakfast. They are also called medialuna (half-moon) and usually filled with dulce de leche or membrillo (quince paste). I got 14 to the dozen. Unfortunately they were nowhere near as tasty as when they were fresh from the panderia. It had been a cold night. Certainly I did not need the air-conditioner in the room, but I could see that the heater would have been essential earlier in the year.

The tour guide asked us to put our hand up when our country was called and we discovered that we were a mixed lot. Argentinians and Spaniards predominated, followed by Europeans: from Netherlands, UK, Germany, Norway, Sweden. There was an exquisite Turkish girl with her parents. She had just completed a film-making course in the US. There was one USAn and me. The guide was Hungarian. He had just come from a family gathering in Baires. It had been a 14 hour drive down south.

The water was very clear, a dark jade colour. There was an hour wait for the boat but after that we had a lot of time watching the whales. I must admit that I was less than enthralled. Sure, one should take the opportunity to see these majestic mammals at least once, but on this sort of tour you only get to see a part of the animal when it surfaces, the back or a fin. If you are lucky you might see the tail as the whale dives. So it's not a tour I care to do again.

After that we were taken to see sea lions at La Bolsa, but from the top of a cliff because we were not allowed to approach. It was a 90 metre drop.

Many people took their lunch at a restaurant near this lighthouse. I bought a drink and finished the rest of my facturas with some biscuits.

I used to show the slide on the right and say this is the rare Patagonian cat. It was a joke. As far as I know it was a normal cat, but it was quite pleased to have some human attention. I imagine it would be lonely living out there with only the lighthouse keepers.

After lunch we were taken to see an elephant seal colony. They filled the air with their loud grunts and cries. The southern elephant seal has extreme disparity between the sizes of the males and the females. The tour guide pointed out one dead seal on the sand. It had probably died of sickness. Nature is pitiless, weeding out the unfit.

As far as I gathered, all they did in life was hunt, eat, copulate and sleep. And avoid orcas. What a life. Well, I'm sure these pinnipeds have their place in nature, but I can't feel much affection for what to me looks like a sack of blubber. So add seal watching to the list of things I don't care to do again.

A distant island was pointed out to us as a protected bird reserve. We couldn't really tell at the distance, even in this telephoto shot.

I didn't make it to Trelew in time to make a booking for Punta Tombo so I would have to do it first thing next morning. For dinner I found a tenedor libre (self-serve buffet restaurant, page in Spanish). In Argentina they were usually run by Chinese. I chatted with a waitress. She said that her family was hoping to go to the US; Argentina was just a stepping stone. They felt that the country was going down the drain: Argentinians spent beyond their means, didn't work enough and bore too many children. Well, perhaps not the same people doing all of those things.