Shut your eyes and imagine Patagonia for a moment. What do you see? If you’re like most people, you’ll probably have a picture of some wild mountains. And if you added some animals, there might be condors soaring high above, while a puma stalks guanacos on the slopes below.
If this sounds like a cliché, it’s because it’s a good one. No one who has seen the Andes and its wildlife could fail to be enchanted by them. But there’s a completely different side to the region that’s only just being discovered by travellers (though it’s been known to wildlife filmmakers for years). It’s on Patagonia’s Atlantic coast where you’ll find world’s largest penguin rookeries, a nursery for southern right whales, and a place where orcas hunt by beaching themselves in the middle of seal colonies. This is Peninsula Valdés – home to one of South America’s greatest wildlife safaris.
Welcome to Peninsula Valdés
I knew Peninsula Valdés long before I knew its name. Like many people, I grew up watching David Attenborough’s wildlife programmes. There was one scene from The Trials of Life that really stuck with me. A quiet beach packed with sea lions minding their own business when—whoosh!—an enormous orca lunged out of the waves to beach itself on the shingle to grab lunch, before wiggling like a giant black and white caterpillar to get itself back in the water. It was extraordinary and iconic – they even put it on the cover of the book about the series. I knew that one day I had to see it for myself. So when my plane started its descent into Argentina’s Trelew airport, and I saw the greatest fist of the peninsula sticking out into the ocean, I couldn’t have been more excited.
I have to confess that first impressions are a little underwhelming for a visitor. Trelew welcomes you with a life-sized statue of a Patagotitan—the largest dinosaur in the world—to remind you that this has been a place for impressive wildlife for millions of years, but the landscape at first seems rather drab and flat. It’s a bit of a shock if you’re more used to the drama of Patagonia’s mountains. But like all great wildlife destinations, the more time you spend here, the more hidden secrets you start to uncover.
An Atlantic safari lodge
Anyone going on a wildlife safari knows that you can cover a lot of ground, so having a good base is essential. Peninsula Valdés stretches around 80km (50 miles) from north to south, and is criss-crossed with roads that are little more than dirt tracks through the pampas. Home for me was Estancia Rincón Chico, just over two hours drive from the airport in the southern part of the peninsula.
Rincón Chico is what travel writers like to call ‘rustic’. It’s a beautiful old ranch close to the coastline, where it feels like the clock stopped several decades ago, and where every surface is covered with historic memorabilia or animal skulls. It was comfortable rather than luxury, but the experience here is all about being in this remote landscape with access to a beautiful landscape packed with wildlife. The owner Agustín Olazábal, told me his family built it after travelling here in the 1890s from the French Pyrenees to raise sheep. Now, he proudly added, it’s where the BBC and National Geographic film crews stay when they want to film the wildlife – and it’s hard to get a better recommendation than that.
An endless penguin parade
Just as you might do on safari in Africa, each day we would set out on a game drive along the coast in a Land Rover on the look out for wildlife. I had come to see marine life, so I was constantly surprised when Agustín would stop the vehicle to show us an armadillo, or point to a small herd of guanacos. After seeing them in places like Torres del Paine against a mountain backdrop, it felt strange to encounter them wandering down to the beach against a blue horizon. Even more intriguing was the mara, or Patagonia hare. They’re slightly misnamed because they’re not rabbits at all but the second largest rodent in the world after the capybara – though with their weirdly long legs I wondered if they might have a dash of the antelope in them as well.
Our first outing led to Caleta on the north coast of the beach. This is home to the largest colony of Magellanic penguins in the world – perhaps 600,000 of them. The peculiar thing is that when we arrived, there didn’t seem to be any penguins on the beach at all. But when you stop and look, they slowly start to appear, hidden in the spiky bush where they make their dens. It was like a scene from Where’s Wally? when you struggle to see him and then he’s absolutely everywhere.
With Agustín at our side, and no need to watch the clock, the inner lives of the penguins also began to resolve themselves. He pointed out the males who had just come out of the ocean to build a nest, and then, amid the crowds, locate his life partner. Magellanic penguins always return to the same nest, but as we watched we could see other males trying to steal a nest, and the owner fighting to defend it.
For lunch, we picked a penguin-free spot on the beach, and watched giant petrels flying in from the sea, and the Magellanics coming and going from the water. The wind hammered us (that’s one constant in Patagonia it seems, whether there are mountains or not), but being surrounded by wildlife was such a calming and immersive experience. I could see why the penguins chose this beach to call home.
The birth of a new generation
The coastline on the Peninsula is surprisingly varied. The north is much flatter while the southern is dominated by cliffs. Both give great opportunities to see one of the region’s biggest residents – the Southern elephant seals.
Seeing the elephant seals from above was a great introduction to the dynamics of the beach. It was a drama I was happy to watch for hours. An enormous bull weighing four tonnes was on constant patrol, guarding the harem of females he’d accumulated, chasing away any other males. The challengers were constantly trying their luck. As soon as the big bull saw them coming he’d make his defence – and you’d be surprised at just how quickly they can move on land. The smaller males would beat a hasty retreat, but I saw one of the bigger rivals rise to the moment and joust with the beachmaster, taking a few blows before realising he was outgunned. Perhaps next season.
The elephant seals spent most of their time at sea, diving even deeper than sperm whales for squid. Unlike sea lions which form large permanent colonies—and I’d see plenty of those further along the coast—they only come to land to breed, when defending a patch of land is the order of the day, and the females get to pass on their genes through the strongest and most successful male.
There were already plenty of pups on the beach. When the mothers give birth, they remain in land until the pups are weaned, and from our vantage point we could see huge mothers with tiny newborns, and then earlier pups getting larger and larger as their mums seemed to deflate besides them, as they waited patiently to go back to sea.
Later, Agustín led us down to a different beach where we could quietly approach the seals on their own level. They were supremely unbothered by our appearance. With a naturalist’s eye, Augustín quickly became fixated on one cow in particular, about 20 metres away. To us, it looked like just another seal, but he insisted we stay and watch. After half an hour, she went into a series of contractions. Moments later, a slippery pup flopped out of her, and within minutes the pup was licked clean and was taking its first drink of milk. It was an utterly extraordinary moment – the first time I’ve ever seen a wild animal give birth.
Orcas on patrol
Moments after the birth, two gulls squabbled over who was going to eat the afterbirth. It was a reminder that every animal has its role to play in the cycle of life. And it reminded me that elephant seal pups like the one I’d been so privileged to see arrive in the world are also responsible for the reason why I’d wanted to travel to Peninsula Valdes in the first place. Adult elephant seals or seal lions are too big and wily for an orca, but pups entering the water for the first time make the perfect prey – particularly for any killer whale clever enough to beach itself in order to grab a meal.
Orcas are resident throughout the year along the Peninsula, built only a few places have enough of seals or sea lions combined with a steeply shelving beach that allows them to perform such an audacious hunting manoeuvre. We lingered as long as we could at each, but with no luck, though I never took my eyes off the shoreline, looking for those tell-tale dorsal fins. They never arrived.
But when I left Rincón Chico to spend the night at nearby Puerto Piramides, my phone started buzzing. Puerto Piramides is the gateway to the peninsula, where you can see Southern right whales from the shore, raising their giant flukes to the sky before they head south to spend the austral summer in polar waters. They were enchanting – and my first sighting of some whales apparently helped summon their cousins.
The morning I left the estancia, the other guests were having a picnic on the beach when 25 orcas suddenly appeared. There were no seals to be seen, but that wasn’t why the orcas were there. They had arrived to give a lesson. Orcas are matrilineal, and pass down their knowledge through the female line. And on that morning, they appeared to teach their calves how to beach themselves. For an hour they did just that, showing the young to approach at the right angle, and then use the waves to help wriggle themselves back into the water. All while the people on the best enjoyed the best picnic they’d ever have.
Every time my phone buzzed, it was Agustín Whatsapping me another photo. I couldn’t really complain because the right whales were giving me a show of their own. It was pure serendipity – and a reminder that when it comes to wildlife watching, no matter how good the guide is, there’s always an element of luck, because the animals are always going to choose how you get to see them.
And a lesson that if you have the choice on a wildlife safari, you should always book that extra day – just in case.
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