When I was conducting preliminary planning for my Argentina trip, one of the first areas I was dead-set on visiting was the Chubut Province, which runs along a significant portion of the country’s eastern coast and is part of Patagonia. The main reason is the province’s wildlife reservoirs, which feature right whales, orcas, penguins, and many more, which migrate to this area to reproduce in its warmer waters during the spring.

Excursion to Punta Tombo

I originally wasn’t planning to visit Punta Tombo, which is situated over 150 kilometers south of Puerto Madryn, the city that I flew into. However, that changed when I read that it is home to the country’s largest colony of Magellanic Penguins. While I was planning to see these creatures in Península Valdés, that place didn’t have the largest colony, so…

From Puerto Madryn, the drive to Punta Tombo took about two and a half hours, so fellow travelers should make this a day trip unless they fly into the closer city of Trelew. The drive down south is straightforward, and there really isn’t much to look at. That said, the last 40 kilometers did get very bumpy once I got off Ruta Provincial 3 and onto Ruta Provincial 1, which is a completely gravel road. I had to slow my driving by quite a bit since I could feel pretty much every piece of gravel that I drove over (I was driving a Fiat, a very common rental car in Argentina).

Upon arriving at Punta Tombo, I first had to walk up to the interpretation center, where I paid the entry fee of 18,000 pesos. It’s necessary to pay the fee and receive the pass if you want to see the penguins. The staff recommended that I walk through the galleries in the interpretation center, where I could learn about the history of this area and about the wildlife. The galleries are quite neat, and a portion of it is translated to English. After walking through the center, I noticed a trench running for quite some distance, so I walked into it to see where it would lead, which was a giant compass on the ground. There’s a couple ramps leading up to the ground, and if you head up them, you may see a herd of guanacos, which are a commonly seen animal in Patagonia.

I then drove down a kilometer-long road that leads to the penguin colony itself. There, a staff member confirmed that I had the pass, gave me some ground rules (give right-of-way to penguins if they cross the trail, stay at least two meters away from a penguin, etc.), and told me the trail was approximately three kilometers along.

As I soon found out, the penguins were all around me, even if I couldn’t see them at first. I started walking on the trail close to 1:00pm, and by then, the sun was already out. A lot of the penguins were actually trying to find shelter from the heat, and their burrows tend to be wherever there’s a bush. All I had to do is peek into or under a bush, and I could find a sleepy penguin. For the most part, the penguins don’t seem to fear people, as they would sometimes get very close to people and not pay them much mind.

As I continued to walk down the trail, I started to see progressively more penguins, and these tended to be out and about. Some were poking their heads out of their burrows, some were preening, and others were waddling about from place to place. Where the trail turned into an elevated walkway, it could be a shelter for a group of penguins, so it became a good habit to check under it.

The trail eventually leads to a couple of overlooks with a view of the beach, and there, I found a lot of penguins finding some cool relief in the sand or in the water. While I’ve seen penguins in zoos, seeing them in their natural habitat makes for a completely different experience.

As I was returning to the trailhead, I stopped to take photos of a penguin in its burrow, and to my amazement, I saw that she was incubating not one, but two eggs. As I had found out at the interpretative center, penguin parents take turns incubating, and I presumed her mate was someplace else at the moment. After a couple minutes, she got off of the eggs and emerged from the burrow, ostensibly to get some fresh air. This truly was an incredible sight, and I’m glad that my visit to Punta Tombo ended with such a high note.

All Over Península Valdés

Península Valdés is a nature preserve that’s a hotbed of wildlife activity (especially in the warmer spring and summer seasons), and all of it is protected, so it’s no wonder that it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well as a well-known tourist destination. The prospect of seeing animals I had read about as a child was too great a temptation, and in the buildup to my Argentina trip, whenever my friends what I was looking forward to most, my answer was always this area. For those who want to see a specific species of animal, I recommend checking out this wildlife chart.

Getting to Península Valdés is fairly straightforward, if not a long, drive. After arriving at the entry gate, I paid 30,000 pesos for the admission, in addition to a vehicle entry fee of 1,700 pesos per night. After passing through, I made a point to stop at the visitor center. While it is currently under renovation, there’s staff available, and because I really wanted to see orcas (fun fact: I wanted to be an orca trainer at SeaWorld as a child), I asked when would be a good time to visit the overlook areas where they have appeared. The answer: at high tide, give or take two hours. Since tons of visitors come wanting to see these animals, they have information posted about what days they were last seen in those areas as well as what time high tide is for each day of the current month. The staff there also informed me that some roads were closed for construction, as was one of the attractions, Punta Delgada.

Driving Around

I woke up later than anticipated the following morning, and my original plans to arrive at Caleta Valdés (where orcas had last been seen) in the early morning high tide went out the window. I ended up hitting the road around 8:30am, having decided to drop by Punta Norte, another spot where orcas are typically seen in the northern part of the peninsula. I hadn’t realized until then just how vast the peninsula is - getting to Punta Norte took nearly an hour and a half to travel nearly 80 kilometers, and the vast majority of the peninsula’s roads are pure gravel. Needless to say, driving around was painful, especially since I was pretty sure the Fiat wasn’t meant to drive on such roads; if I drove too quickly, the entire car would rattle, almost as though it was about to fall apart.

At Punta Norte, I got on a network of walkways perched on the cliffs overlooking the beaches, which were lined with dozens of drowsy elephant seals. Their pups, of which there were a significant number, are a common source of food for the orcas, which regularly beach themselves to capture the pups with their mouths before withdrawing back into the ocean. As I made my way along the walkways, I observed these seals, particularly the males, as one of them lumbered from one female to another and seemingly pinned her down as the pups shuffled away, clearly wanting to stay out of potential trouble.

I had made a reservation to visit the Reserva Natural Estancia San Lorenzo to see more of the Magellanic Penguins, and after checking my watch, I saw that I didn’t have much time left. Then I looked off into the distance and saw movement in the water; it was too big to be a seal. I took out my phone, activated the camera, and zoomed in all the way to see fins moving across the water. They belonged to something that was clearly larger than a shark. At that moment, I couldn’t believe my luck. Not only was I seeing orcas in the wild (up until that point a longtime dream of mine), they were moving along the beach toward us.

I made my way back on the walkways to see that a crowd was starting to form, as others too had spotted the orcas. I stopped right where there was a large group of seals and waited for the orcas to arrive. As I snapped photo after phone, I was too breathless and occupied to count how many there were, but a couple next to me mentioned aloud that there were eight. There were several females, at least one male, and several calves. Some of them patrolled very close to shore, and by the time they crossed in front of us, we could see the white oval patch behind their eyes and the white-purple patch behind their dorsal fins. We waited with bated breath - high tide was several hours ago, but would they hunt? We noticed one of the females come very close to where the seals were, but the waves were stopping a few meters short. One female circled around a few times to gauge whether they could hunt, but it decided not to. As they returned back where they had appeared, I noticed two females and one calf seemingly practicing the beaching method further down the shoreline, but they never completely beached, preferring to stay within the waves.

I realized when I checked my watch again that I was going to be late for the penguin tour. I rushed back to my car and hit the road again. The estancia was about 20 kilometers away, but the graveled roads were rough, and I ended up having to go through two gates. By the time I arrived, I was 15 minutes late, and the tour had started. I debated whether to go on the next one at 2:00pm, as I had already been to Punta Tombo the day before - was it redundant to see penguins again, especially at a higher price point of $60 USD? I decided I could make that decision later, as the estancia was well regarded for its cordero, so instead I decided to focus on lunch. Afterward, I decided to make my leave; I hadn’t paid for the tour initially, and I didn’t need to see more penguins.

I decided to visit Caleta Valdés, located on the peninsula’s east side. At Mirador de Pengüinos, I saw a handful of the Magellanic Penguins (nowhere near as many compared to Punta Tonto) set against a very incredible backdrop of the bay. At Punta Cantor, there’s a couple overlooks with an impressive view of the bay, and a couple elephant seals were present below. The tide was rather low, so there wasn’t much to see. Because I had time to kill, I went on the Sendera Lolita, a trail that runs along the cliff to another few overlooks. While walking, I again saw movement in the ocean, perhaps a couple kilometers away. Once I saw the white callouses on the animal’s head, I knew that I had spotted not one, but two Southern right whales. In Península Valdés, these gentle giants are known to get fairly close to shore. I was beyond thrilled - I had seen both large marine animals I wanted to see, and it was only my first full day here!

The rest of my drive was quite uneventful, and after leaving Punta Cantor, I decided to return to town. Apart from one dead armadillo (likely the victim of a vehicular hit-and-run) and one ostrich, the only animals I saw were guanacos and sheep, which sometimes hung out together in harmony.

The next day, I did check out Punta Pirámides, an overlook to the south with a solid view of the sea lions lounging on the rocks below near the water’s edge. I was pleased to see that there were plenty of sea lions to see, even though almost all of them were lounging lazily in the sun.

Puerto Pirámides

Puerto Pirámides is the only somewhat populated town in Península Valdés, and it is very much a tourist town. I stayed here for two nights, and really, it’s meant to be a launching pad for day trips into the peninsula as well as whale watching tours. The town mostly consists of hotels and hostels, restaurants, and the tour offices. By design, most of the places close early by Argentinean standards elsewhere, as the restaurants tend to close at around 11:00pm. The beach is nice and relaxing, but for the most part, there’s not much to do here.

Whale Watching

There are six whale watching tours in Puerto Pirámides to choose from to see the Southern right whales, and from what I could find on Google, they have similar reviews and rates for essentially the same services as far as whale watching was concerned. I chose to go on an hour-and-a-half-long tour at 10:00am with Hydro Sport for 125,000 pesos.

The boats for these tours launch right out of the town’s beach, and it’s quite impressive how they do it - tractors push the carriers (which essentially act as the dock) containing the boats down the beach and into the water, and once the boat is at a sufficient depth, it launches backwards from the carrier and out into the ocean.

There is bench-style seating on the boats along the sides and in the center, and the crew outlined a reliable way for everyone to see the whales. If a whale was on the boat’s starboard side, those seated there would remain where they were, and the others on the port side would stand and come over, and vice versa. The crew preached the virtue of patience, saying that the Southern right whales tend to be further out at sea this time of year, and they could be quite shy.

On several occasions, our captain would spot a whale, come up a respectable distance away, and keep the boat moving forward to keep pace with it. He spotted a female whale and her calf, and we spent about 20 minutes or so keeping eyes on and following this pair. The whales’ heads would occasionally breach the water’s surface, and if the tail breaches and disappears in an arch-like motion, we understood the whales had dived. Several times, we were treated to the sight of the whales’ bodies suddenly breaching the surface to jump (at a safe distance away) and that was a tremendous sight to behold.

Puerto Madryn

I had originally planned to stay in Puerto Madryn for only one night and spend limited time in the city, but life throws a curveball at us every once in a while - and in my case, it came in the form of a massive transportation strike across the country on October 30, halting planes, trains, trucks, subways, and ship operations. The strike is being driven by demands for better wages, union freedom, and opposition to certain government policies, such as the proposed privatization of Aerolíneas Argentinas. This meant that my flight out of Puerto Maryn and into Buenos Aires was cancelled and rescheduled to another day. While Aerolíneas Argentinas had originally rescheduled my flight to be within hours of me leaving Argentina, my friend Eugenia was able to reschedule it to October 31, with the caveat that only first-class seating was available. However, this meant I had to find a hotel to stay at in the city.

While there’s more to do in Puerto Madryn compared to Puerto Pirámides, it’s still very much a quiet city compared to other places. Most of the popular restaurants, shops, and activities are located along the beach, but that’s really all there is to it. The feeling I get is that most people treat Puerto Madryn as a launching point for tour-related activities outside the city. That said, if you find yourself with a day in the city like me, I think there’s good value in walking on the Comandante Luis Piedra Buena Pier, which stretches a respective distance out to the ocean. If you’re lucky, you may be able to see the Southern right whales, as I did from my sixth-floor hotel room at around evening high tide.

The Eats

LIKED: Churros de mani, dulce de leche y fruto rojo (peanut, caramelized milk, and berry churros) from La Familia Churreria y Cafetería.

LIKED: Oreo and pistachio ice cream from Heladería Mares.

LIKED: Cordero from Reserva Natural Estancia San Lorenzo.

LIKED: Rabas (squid rings) from Covacha (Puerto Pirámides).

AMBIVALENT: La Regional (cold meats and cheeses) from Peppe (Puerto Madryn).

AMBIVALENT: Sorrentinos del Atlàntico (sorrentinos stuffed with creamy hake and served with shrimp sauce) from Peppe (Puerto Madryn).

AMBIVALENT: Seafood risotto from Malón (Puerto Madryn).

DISLIKED: Mariscada del San José (San José shellfish stew) from Covacha (Puerto Pirámides).

I’ll be honest; all in all, the food in this part of Argentina isn’t all that great. Despite the area’s close proximity to the ocean, I found the seafood dishes fairly underwhelming, which was a big shock. As far as highlights go, I enjoyed the cordero at Reserva Natural Estancia San Lorenzo, and I had very good churros and ice cream at La Familia Churros and Heladería Mares respectively, both of which are located in Puerto Madryn.

Travel Tips:

As you can probably tell from what I wrote, renting a car is necessary unless you don’t mind being part of a tour group. There’s no public transportation to and from Punta Tombo, and while there’s a bus terminal in Puerto Pirámides, I’ve heard not-good things about long-distance buses in Argentina. I will say that driving in Puerto Madryn was kind of stressful, as most of the time the only intersection controls are yourself, other drivers, and the occasional traffic signals, some of which are located solely on the sides and shockingly aren’t overhead. As I alluded to in my previous post, dogs can be a problem, especially when driving through more residential areas. I had an instance where one apparently ran next to my car in my blind spot and ran ahead, and I could’ve hit it had I not stopped in time.

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