On the bus journey on the journey there was a film screened called "Gigantes de Valdez" which is about Puerto Madryn and the locals battle against the development of a huge hotel complex being built in there town and the impact this would have on the wildlife and area, upon our arrival we saw the monstrosity that the film was based on towering above the surrounding town and landscape. Fortunately the peninsula itself has been little touched by development so far, but for how long is uncertain as the Argentines have problems with uncontrolled development usually to the detriment of the environment.
This sculpture was one of many carved from tree stumps on the promenade of Puerto Madryn.
Whale watching
We arrived just in Puerto Piramides just in time to see the Southern Right whales (Ballena franca austral) and their calf's before they left the warm water nursery surrounding the peninsula for the cooler waters of the southern pacific.
On our arrival we went out on a whale watching tour and were amazed to see whales so close you could reach out and touch them, though this was not the encounter that we had with the whales.
, as we witnessed a whale "waving goodbye" to Puerto Piramides with its tail, and on our penultimate day saw 4 whales that followed us along the coast to a rocky outcrop where we had lunch whilst we watched the whales and they watched us!
The landscape on the peninsula is like nothing I have ever seen, inland it is arid and lunar like, and around the coastline there are large crumbling cliffs made up of layer upon layer of soft sedimentary rock with thick layers of fossilised shells. The beeches were littered with these shells and a huge variety of strange, attractive and unusual rocks (Which later weighed our bags down as we collected a kilo or so of them each)
The coastline is also littered with caves of all sizes from small cracks that are a few feet deep, to huge caverns ending in impenetrable darkness.
The perfect place for exploring as the beach's are deserted and the landscape wondrous. A lot of the time was spent feeling like we were shipwrecked on a desert island, with just the whales for company!
A storm brewing on the day we left Puerto Piramides, just before rain that hurt fell from the sky!
A couple of the many caves we found on the shore, with Sarah for scale.
Some of the beaches were more tricky to get to than others, this one was more photogenic than clinging onto barnacle covered rocks!
