Will we see penguins?

On Wednesday, March 4, in the early morning hours we tested the toilet.  Yep, still working.  Now it was time to formalize our complaint in writing, and there will be a letter sent to Princess.  We still love our beautiful ship, though. 

We were really looking forward to this day as we were going on yet another all-day bus ride (not so exciting), to see sea lions, elephant seals and, most important of all, penguins.  Penguins are why we wanted to do this trip.

Puerto Madryn is in the Patagonia region and is the second largest fishing port in Argentina.  It’s a town of about 100,000, established in 1865 by Welsh immigrants.  There is a huge aluminum factory, Aloar, located there and you could see piles of aluminum waiting to be exported.  The electricity for the factory comes from several hundred kilometers away (I figured maybe 350 miles or so), and only provides electricity for the factory.  The factory is what has contributed to the quick growth of the town.  In the 1970s there were only a few thousand people living here.

It’s basically a desert area, and our tour guide told us that horses and cows that are brought from other areas cannot survive because the water is so bad.  Only those that are born and raised here survive. 

The tour we had booked would take us to the Peninsula Valdes, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and home to seals, sea lions, elephant seals and the Magellanic penguins.  What we did not know is that there are ostriches and a llama-like animal called the guanaco, one of four species of what they call camels here.  Llamas and alpacas are two others that were not in the area we would be going.  And I don’t remember the name of the fourth, so don’t ask me.  There is also a migration of right whales that come in, but this wasn’t the time for that.

In addition to the UNESCO site, the Peninsula Valdes is also the lowest point on the South American continent being 132 feet below sea level.  

As we rode along the paved highway by sage-bush-looking plant life, the first animal we saw was a guanaco.  Fooled me.  Looks just like a llama. 

These guanaco had crossed the road in front of the bus and then hopped the fence.  All I got was guanaco butt.

I saw a couple of rabbits that looked to be the size of my Beagles. 

Going down the road to the sea lion colony was beautiful and made me think of the Badlands in South Dakota.

We then hit gravel roads that would take us into the park and on to our destinations.  Lots of dust-covered sage-type brush here.  Our first stop was to see a sea lion colony.  There are boardwalks to walk along, but they don’t get you very close, so it’s nice not to disturb the animals but not so great for photos.  You could hear them carrying on loudly, though, for anyone who would listen.  I’m sure some would prefer not to hear it for very long, but it’s music to my ears.  I could listen for a long time, and look for a photo, or just watch them swimming or moving quite quickly using flippers and a snake-like up-and-down movement.

The sea lions have a beautiful place to lay about, swim and play if they choose not to go into the deep water unless they're hunting for food.

 Next we were going to where the penguins were located.  But we stopped and our guide picked up box lunches for us, containing a sandwich, an empanada with what seemed like taco filling, an apple and a dulce de leche (like caramel) sweet, and a bottle of water.  Surprisingly everything tasted quite good. 

Yahoo!!!  It's lunch time.

It really was quite tasty.

 When we got where the little Magellanic penguins were, they were also quite far away down on the beach, but there was one little fella who seemed to want to be near humans as he had managed to make his way up to the boardwalk and probably wasn’t more than 20 feet away. 

The majority of the penguins were far, far away.

But this little guy was willing to be a ham for a day.

He preened, he flapped his little flippers, he bent his head over, he laid down and was quite the endearing little creature.  I suppose it was good not to be too close as I’ve heard they don’t carry the best odor about them.  He put on quite the show while we visited, and never seemed afraid or much wanted to move away.

He was very graceful.

And sometimes not so much.

 

But always cute.

And then it was break time.

We saw ostriches, too, that blended quite well with the terrain being of a grey color.  Their long legs and big bodies make them seem very ungainly, but they can move pretty rapidly.



They sure do blend with the scenery.

Our third major stop was to see elephant seals.  There weren’t many there as most as moved on.  There may have been a dozen but when I used the binoculars I could also see a couple of dead penguins on the beach.  Waaaahhhh.  I didn’t enjoy that. 



For comparison, this is a sea lion skull.



And this is an elephant seal skull.

It was too far away but this elephant seal was heading to the water leaving a trail of ruffled up sand behind him.

There were a few birds.

So, no real photos there of elephant seals, but it was fun to see them.

On the way back it seemed most everyone on the bus napped.  It was a long day of bus riding, but worth the effort to see things. 

Once back at the ship we went and had some dinner and then took a nap …

Our nap extended into Thursday, March 5.  Wow, that was quite the nap.  We didn’t expect to sleep about 12 hours, but guess we both needed it.

Jaz headed to the gym while I posted a long-past-due blog.  I then headed to the gym but it was quite crowded so just did a bit of weight work as we wanted to attend the next lecture on Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.  The lectures have been excellent so we certainly didn’t want to miss this one.

In the meantime, we did go to breakfast, and wouldn’t you know it … shared a table with a couple from Homer, Alaska.  Too funny.  On Easter Island, same thing … but that couple was from Sitka.  Small world.

After the lecture we went to the next Spanish lesson, I did the line dancing and then we went to lunch with our Brit friends, Maureen and Joe, and headed to bingo.  I won the first game, $100, but there were three winners so we split … $33 is better than nothing.

Dinner was in the Donatello Dining Room as guests of our new friends from Brazil, Herr Doktor and his wife.  We don’t know their names.  (Paul and Rani)