Last week I took a trip down to the northeastern side of Patagonia to a little coastal town called Puerto Madryn. The town is famous for the whales and other marine life that populate the “Golfo Nuevo” to mate and give birth as the climate gets warmer around this time of year. After a 20 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires, my three friends and I dropped our bags off at the hostel and signed ourselves up for a tour of Península Valdés an ecological reserve that serves as the main attraction of the area. We spent all day driving around the arid Peninsula, which happens to look a lot “like the Australian outback, but with funky llama things instead of kangaroos,” according to one of my Aussie friends on the trip. We stopped at various beaches and were lucky enough to see the very first penguins of the season. Having never seen a penguin in their natural habitat before, it was awesome to be able to get up close to one of these goofy animals. One particular penguin was scratching his side with his webbed foot like a dog scratches his ear.
As a part of the tour, we also took a boat out to see some South Right Whales. I was amazed by the amount of whales in the gulf that you could see in all directions. Some even came close enough to mist us and swam right under the boat, as if to say “hey”. One of the current ecological problems of the area is that some birds that migrated to the area on trash barges have started attacking the whales when they come up for air, leaving them with sores and infections. As a temporary solution, the local government is having the police force shoot the birds off the whales from time to time with rifles, but that's neither here nor there. We continued along our drive around to the northern coast of the peninsula where we found some sea lions and sea elephants relaxing on the beach screaming at each other (awesome) before heading back to town.
The following day we set out for Punta Ninfas on the other side of the gulf on rented mountain bikes. We rode along the coast with the ocean on one side and desert on the other, an enormous sky overhead. We stopped at several of the beautiful pebbled beaches along the way, like one with old and rusted sunken ship just off the coast. After 2 hours of biking we finally reached the point where we could look down from a cliff onto the colony of seals that covered the beach. It was pretty funny to watch them all wobbling around and soaking up the sun while they made the funniest barking type noises you could imagine. Apparently, if you visit the area around March you can actually see orca whales beaching themselves to snack on some of the sea lions before returning to sea.
The sun went down as we rode back to the hostel and revealed the most incredible spread of stars that you could almost peel them out of the sky. At certain points throughout the trip, you remind yourself that you are in the middle of nowhere in Patagoina, and it really takes you back. Before actually visiting, Patagonia was just a novel idea in my head, and I couldn’t even picture the dramatic landscapes, let alone imagine actually being there, which made actually being there a surreal dream-like experience. Does this place really exist? I’m still unsure.
Back at the hostel we met a man named Guillermo. Guillermo was from a town nearby, but was visiting Puerto Madryn for the weekend to speak at a conference being held that focused on the history of the Chubut Province. He explained to us that although a group of 150 Welsh settlers were the first Europeans to settle in that specific area in 1865, Ferdinand Magellan had been to Patagonia in the 1520’s and given this part of the continent it’s name. He described the area as patagón, meaning the “Land of the Bigfeet” because the Spanish on the expedition thought that the local natives were actaully giants. The average Spaniard at that time was only 5’1’’ while the Tehuelches were around 5’11’’. Giants was a bit of an exaggeration, but an understandable oversight as they must have beens so excited by all the crazy things they saw in their explorations. All in all Patagonia was an incredible experience like nothing I have seen before, and I hope to explore the Chilean side when my parents come visit in late October.
Hasta luego,
Giordano