Mar del Plata

I spent one night in Salta after finishing up my adventures in north Argentina before hopping on a plane back to Buenos Aires the next morning. I immediately rented another car at the airport and drove about five hours south to Argentina’s surfing capital, Mar del Plata. It’s time to start exploring the southern half of Argentina, also known as Patagonia. Mar del Plata is just a very pleasant and convenient stop on what turned out to be an epic cross country drive.

I of course spent a day exploring. Though I did see quite a few surfers at the beaches, I stayed out of the water this day. It was pretty cold. My first stop was to the Banquina de Pescadores where all the fishing boats are parked and all the South American Fur Seals hang out. These guys are REALLY stinky, but they are super fun to watch. I also witnessed a few fights.

There’s also an official wildlife preserve for these guys that stretches out along the jetty, but I only saw three out there. Back in the harbor is where all the real action is.

I also took full advantage of the seaside locale to stuff myself with seafood. I found a proper fish n’ chips place and did it up right. Right between my hostel and the fish n’ chips place is the Torre Tanque. It’s apparently an important historical landmark and you can usually go up to the top for birds eye views, but unfortunately, it was closed on my day there.

I pretty much walked the whole length of the boardwalk up the coast. Lots of vendors, street food, buskers, surfers, it’s a vortex of activity, but it was a really pleasant day out. My turn around point was the Natural Science Museum. I was expecting a lot more dinosaur stuff, but it was a pretty small museum.

They had some fish tanks showing off some of the local varieties. For some reason they also had this tank with one lonely and very angry piranha. Everytime I got close he would rush toward me and attack the glass.

This might be the first place I’ve ever been that had twin fur seal statutes marking the entrance to the seaside plaza. This is quite a change from the desert environment from just a couple of days ago.

Puerto Madryn

Most of the sites I intend to see on this part of the journey are wildlife related and the cities I stopped in were just convenient places to break up the drive. After Mar del Plata I drove about six hours to Bahía Blanca for one night, then drove about seven hours the next day to my next official stop, Puerto Madryn, in the Golfo Nuevo. I came here for one main purpose, whales.

A couple thousand Southern Right Whales come here every year to this gulf to have babies. The warm calm waters make for a great nursery apparently. There are boat excursions available to see the whales, but that’s not necessary. During high tide, they come ridiculously close to the shoreline to feed. All you have to do is just stand on the beach and watch. Awesome!

Here at Playa las Canteras, there was an adult and a baby swimming back and forth along the beach. This is definitely an experience I will never forget.

Golfo Nuevo is partially formed by Peninsula Valdes, which has been turned into a giant nature preserve. After watching the whales for a while I started driving out to explore the peninsula when I spotted some more whales at a different beach from the car. I took a hard right, parked the car and ran out on the sand for some more whale watching. These were a little farther out and it looked like there were at least three, maybe four of them. Bonus!

NOW I can head out to Peninsula Valdes. I started by driving way out to the furthest point possible, Punta Norte. It’s all gravel roads out here and the occasional guanacos.

Punta Norte is supposedly one of the premier places to see orcas rush the beach to grab hefalump seals. I was hopeful, but the orcas were a no show for me. As soon as I saw some seals in the water I assumed it was a safe bet that the orcas weren’t around. I did enjoy watching the hefalump seals though.

Mostly they were just laying around, but there was some excitement. First I spotted this male in the water just minding his own business and enjoying the day.

Eventually, he came up on the beach for a nap, but this other much larger male, who was lounging nearby with his harem didn’t like that too much, so he chased him back into the water.

After chasing away the younger male the big guy came right back to his girls, had some sex, and promptly fell fast asleep. He’s had a big big day!

Further south on Peninsula Valdes I visited the small penguin colony. The part of this trip that I’ve been the most excited about is the penguins. Fair warning, there are a LOT of penguins in this post. This small colony was just the primer, but I was very happy to finally see some.

I thought Peninsula Valdes was going to be this smorgasbord of wildlife and while I did have some very cool sightings and some amazing views along the way, it was mostly just a lot of driving. And the entrance was kind of expensive. I wasn’t expecting emus either, but BAM, there they were. I spotted others a few days later at another stop too. I’m assuming they’re emus, by the way. I’m not totally sure.

After driving about a million miles around Peninsula Valdes, I needed something with a better guarantee. So next I headed out to Punta Tombo, the biggest penguin colony in South America. There’s an estimated five hundred thousand or so penguins here! Jackpot!

These colonies are where penguins come to reunite with their mates, lay eggs, and have babies. The egg laying part happens in mid to late October, like now, so naturally love was in the air. Lots of cuddling and mutual grooming.

This place was huge. There were penguins just everywhere, napping, guarding nests, grooming, walking all around, and occasionally, screaming with their distinctive howl. It’s like a broken bicycle horn blowing through a kazoo. The views of the coastline were pretty awesome as well.

The beach was a particularly busy hub of activity. There was a steady stream of two way traffic between the nests and the water. Some were heading out to feed, while others were coming back in and heading home. It was super fun to watch.

Interestingly, there were also a lot of guanacos roaming around. They do their thing while the penguins do theirs and they don’t seem to pay any attention to each other.

I spent almost the whole day here watching these guys. I would have been more than happy to camp out and do it again the next day. The only motivation I had to finally leave was knowing that I have several other penguin sites lined up in the coming days. Holy Crap… penguins make me happy!

Time to leave Puerto Madryn and continue south. On the way I stopped in the town of Trelew to visit what is supposedly the premier dinosaur museum in all of Argentina. Now this was a fantastic place! Right at the start I saw my old friend nuequénsaurus. Since I started this trip I’ve actually learned that Argentina has several dinosaurs named after it, not just one.

There were so many fossils in this museum. Everytime I thought I was reaching the end another room opened up.

The undisputed star of the show though, is the titanosaurus. It seems some ranchers were doing some rancher stuff on their land and accidently discovered the largest femur bone ever found, which turned into uncovering this giant. The paleontologists did their paleontology stuff and determined that this is the largest land animal to have ever existed, that we know of, and weighed around seventy metric tons. The really mind wobbling part is that this guy wasn’t even fully grown yet. Wow!

Camarones

Having overdosed on dinosaurs, it was time to get back on the road. The driving in this part of Patagonia is actually kind of boring. It’s basically hundreds and hundreds of miles of this picture seen below. Eventually, I arrived at my next stop, the very tiny fishing village of Camarones.

My one and only reason for stopping in Camarones is it’s proximity to the resident penguins at Cabo Dos Bahías. There’s approximately two hundred fifty thousand penguins at this site and once again, love was in the air.

Cabo Dos Bahías keeps you a little bit farther from the penguins, but it was still awesome. These places are also all really remote, but while Punta Tombo was really crowded and popular, I had Cabo Dos Bahías all to myself. Just me and roughly a quarter million penguins. Awesome!

The beach here at Cabo Dos Bahías was even more active than at Punta Tombo. So many penguins coming and going I couldn’t keep up. I noticed some of the penguins seemed to be marching around in groups. Penguins go out one at a time while their mate stays at the nest. I wondered if these groups were common or maybe I was just reading too much into it.

There were of course plenty of guanacos around too. Let’s not forget them.

When I finished with the penguins I went to check out the viewpoint, Mirador las Islas. The whole coast so far as been pretty flat, so viewpoint is a relative term, but I was still impressed.

I actually stayed at a place just a mile up the road from Camarones that night almost right on the beach. The view from there was pretty impressive too. In the pic below, Camarones is seen on the far right in the distance.

Puerto Deseado

The next morning I split early for my long drive to the next stop, Puerto Deseado, another tiny little fishing village. I came here for only one reason too, more penguins. So far, I’ve only been hanging out with Magellanic penguins, but Puerto Deseado is the jumping off point to visit South America’s only colony of rock hopper penguins on Isla Pingüina near the mouth of the Río Deseado.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get out to the rock hoppers. I called every tour company and boat owner in Puerto Deseado and none would take me out there on account of the weather. It was just too damn windy and it wasn’t expected to calm down for several days. I was super bummed about this one. My bummage is immeasurable! Instead I spent the day hiking the coast of Río Deseado.

The coastal trail up the river passes by four little miniature canyons. The first one, Cañadón Paraguayito, wasn’t really that great. The next one, Cañadón Torcida, on the other hand, was really pretty. I walked the whole length of it to the rivers edge and then made my way further upstream.

Along the way I spotted a few horses until I came to the next little canyon, Cañadón del Indio. This one was a little less spectacular, but pretty much all the views around here are really pretty.

Finally, I reached my end point, Cañadón del Puerto. This one turned out to be the best of all, and the biggest. I arrived at the inland end first and then made my way out to the rivers edge to have lunch on the rocks. There’s a big island out in the middle of it too. It was a really great spot!

As I was just sitting down I heard a very familiar sound coming from the island. It sounded like a broken bicycle horn blowing through a kazoo. Ha! Penguins! They weren’t rock hoppers, but apparently some Magellanic penguins make their home on that island. It must be quite a climb for them. It also must be a very small colony because, even though it’s far, I could only spot two individuals, but it made my day.

After lunch I took the long walk back and got some views of Puert Deseado in the distance. I came across some more horses as well. I was still really disappointed about those rock hoppers, but this was a pretty good hike anyway.

Puerto Santa Cruz

Continuing south, I reached my next stop and another small Patagonian fishing village, Puerto Santa Cruz on the Río Santa Cruz. My first mission was to check the tide tables because this first excursion is apparently inaccessible during high tide. Low tide is in the middle of the afternoon though, so I should be good. First a drive of about ten miles to the mouth of the Río Santa Cruz at Punta Quilla, park the car and hit the beach.

From Punta Quilla it’s about a three mile walk through unstable rocks and sand. The sand was at least relatively hard. It’s also very cold and unbelievably windy today. I really had to bundle up for this one. The wind is so intense it made dunes in the wet sand. Anyway, when most people say they enjoy walks on the beach, they don’t usually mean freezing cold and gale force winds, or even penguins for that matter (hint – more penguins coming up), but we’re not talking about normal people right now, are we? We’re talking about crazy loco in the cabeza me.

Three ish miles on unstable ground leaning 45° into the wind almost the whole way and I finally reached my goal, the penguin colony of Punta Entrada. No entrance fee, no rangers, no walkway, no signs, no other people, nothing. This place was very remote and an EXTREMELY different experience. These penguins are truly wild and obviously not used to having people around. Rather than curious looks, I got a lot of very suspicious looks. I don’t know how, but I could definitely tell a difference in how they regarded me here.

Within a few minutes of arriving I noticed a few random individuals kind of walking towards me. I thought it was a little weird, but before I knew what was happening, suddenly I was surrounded. Penguins were charging at me aggressively from all sides, they were everywhere, screaming at me, pecking at my legs, WHAT HELL IS THIS?!!! Just kidding. Check out these penguin tracks. Without a steady stream of humans the penguin tracks really take over. I don’t think I’ve ever seen penguin tracks before. I thought it was neat.

Actually, these guys were very shy. Whenever one came around a shrub on the way to the beach they would immediately turn and run the other direction. The ones that were out in front of their nests would go back in as soon as they saw me. The ones on the beach wouldn’t come back in unless I was hundreds of feet away and even then they were very wary. I even saw a few come out of the water and then dive back in when they saw me. I really had to respect their space and keep at a long distance.

It was a super zoom only kind of day. As usual though, the beach was the hub of activity. Another interesting thing about this colony was the amount of dead penguins around at various stages of decay. The smell was a little unpleasant. I’m assuming at the other more regulated sites the rangers clean up the dead.

I don’t know what was happening in this picture below. They weren’t making any noise or fighting or anything. They were both just standing perfectly still like that for quite a long time. Some kind of endurance test or feats of strength type of thing? I don’t know. It was weird!

There were a lot of firsts at Punta Entrada. I also witnessed my first penguin fight (below). The one on the far right went ballistic on the tall guy, screeching and charging and pecking, while the two in the front panicked and ran to get out of the way.

After my visit I walked back along that beach much more contemplative than I was expecting to be. Like I said, this was an extremely different experience. I feel like these Punta Entrada penguins gave me an unexpected refresher course in respect. The tide had also receded a lot more than when I started, which made everything quieter and somehow spookier. It was an interesting day.

My other excursion from Puerto Santa Cruz was to Monte León National Park. So far all this driving I’ve been doing has been flat shrubland as far as the eye can see and then some. Monte León wasn’t exactly mountainous, but it was the most interesting not ocean related scenery I’ve seen in almost two weeks. And the poor guanacos have been overshadowed in this post, but I can’t stress enough just how many of them there are. Along every highway and gravel road, they are always there, everywhere.

I had two short hikes planned in Monte León. I was surprised to see the ground covered in these purple flowers. I haven’t seen any flowers around here. They were everywhere and really stunning.

I was also surprised to see this big warning sign about pumas. Haven’t seen one of those either. I liked the part about not hiking alone. Oops!

Can you think of a better trail marker sign than the one seen below? I can’t. As you may have guessed, Monte León also has a small penguin colony. Another sign pointed out that the biggest threat to this colony is predators, unlike any other colony in Argentina. Pumas, foxes, and believe it or not, ferrets are all in the area.

I think Monte León wins the prize for the best looking beach on the Patagonian coast. There’s even a cool arch at the south end of the beach. The scenery around here is probably how it got the national park status to begin with.

I’ve spotted a few of these lizards in this section, but this is the first one that let me actually take a picture.

My other short hike in Monte León was to the Lobería at Cabeza de León. It’s a pretty great viewpoint by itself, but the bonus was the huge colony of fur seals hanging out at the end of that outcrop.

Of course, most of them were just lying around. The excitement was at the waters edge watching them try to make the jump up to the rocks. Some were smart and used the waves to carry them up, but then occasionally they would just slide back into the water. I even saw one push another down into the water. Just a casual nudge with his nose and then watched his buddy take a long slide down. Rude!

This one lone fur seal was laying by himself on a section much closer to the viewpoint. He’s the smart, antisocial one in the community.

Driving back out of the park I enjoyed some more views and tried not to run over any guanacos.

Río Gallegos

A few hours south and I reached my final destination on the Patagonian coast, Río Gallegos. If you haven’t asked yourself this question yet, you may be asking it now, just how many penguins can one person take? That’s a very good question and I’m glad you asked because scientists have been probing this very question for decades now. To date, no upper tolerance limit of penguin saturation as yet been found. So no need to worry, I’m safe.

Like many stops in this post, there is only one reason I came to Río Gallegos, the penguin colony at Cabo Virgenes. This place was by far the most remote and most difficult to get to. It was about three hours and seventy miles of dirt and gravel roads, but at least it was only the last forty miles that were really bad. This is the southernmost point on the Argentinian mainland and if I had tripped on a rock and fell just right, there’s a high probability I could’ve landed in Chile.

According to the signage there are about a quarter million penguins here. It’s not the biggest colony in South America, but it sure felt like it. I couldn’t make out the edges of the colony in the distance like at the others and I felt like I saw more penguins here than at any of the others. There were penguins everywhere as far as my eyes could see.

Not only were penguins visible in all directions, but there were hordes of them walking to and fro all over. Considering how many colonies I’ve been to, this was still overwhelming. I think the site used to be more official, but doesn’t look like it anymore. The visitor center and the official walkway looked abandoned and dilapidated. And I had the whole big giant place to myself. Hell to the yeah!

It also looked abandoned because there were no human footprints anywhere. Every walkway was completely covered in penguin tracks, and now mine too of course.

As I got closer to the beach the real fun began. I saw this first little rise and penguins were walking back from the beach. They just didn’t stop. They kept coming by twos, by threes, and more, and more, and more.

I kept walking until I got to the main viewing platform at the beach. The beach stretched on endless in both directions and there were penguins… everywhere! I actually started laughing out loud. I could not believe my eyes. They were standing at the waters edge, some were walking towards the water, some were walking back towards the nests, there were a lot swimming around in the water and others that I didn’t see just magically appeared out of the water. It was incredible!

I could see the main access point between the beach and the nests, so I walked over to take a look. From where I stood I could see a good part of the beach and the flatland where the nests were. They didn’t come in small groups, they came in large waves. It was like a penguin super highway. I ended up just sitting in the sand and watched them pass for a while. This was a fantastic way to wrap up this part of my trip. Like a big finale at a fireworks show.

It was getting late and I still had that three hour drive on the shitty road back to do so I started walking back to the car and got some close ups on the way. I really love penguins! Penguins make me happy!

I’ll end this post not with a penguin, but with a hairy armadillo. I saw one of these guys way back at Cabo Dos Bahías, but that one was shy and ran faster than a Patagonian gust of wind. This guy, however, was not afraid of me at all. I can’t help but wonder what it’s like to be an armadillo in a penguins world.

The Patagonian coast has been a more than worthy endeavor. It’s a really beautiful place, and magnificently desolate. Thank goodness there are hundreds of thousands of penguins to keep one occupied. Before I go, I think this post deserves a tally…

• 14 days
• 4 provinces
• 2,745 miles (yes, really)
• 537 fur seals
• 48 elephant seals
• 5 maybe 6 southern right whales
• a few lizards
• a couple dozen horses
• 11 emus
• 2,419 guanacos
• 1,463,858 magellanic penguins
• 0 rock hopper penguins (sad face)
• 2 hairy armadillos
• 1 very angry piranha