Whale Spotting (27.09.08)

Mum and her little albino baby.

Today we were going to have a close encounter of the whale kind and hopefully we were going to get the perfect whale tail shot.

The beginning of our trip was rather ominous – the bus kept stalling. Eventually, about half an hour out of town it broke down all together. Thankfully, this occurred right next to a bay where female whales come to give birth. About five metres off shore (not exaggerating for once) a massive southern right whale was swimming along the coast line. I thought it had an ugly growth on its head but it turns out it was just its little (little by whale standards) albino (yep it was white) baby having swimming lessons next to it. Because babies can’t stay underwater long we had a fantastic view of them both splashing about. It was incredible.

After a while a new bus came to collect us. We all piled in and took off to Reserva Faunistica Peninsula Valdes – a really flat, bleak and dry landscape of low shrubs. We headed for over an hour across this uninspiring countryside to Caleta Valdes. Along the way we saw from the distance a family of Mara (mum, dad and two babies) – Patagonian hares. I had to buy a postcard to get a better look at them. They appear to be a hare crossed with a donkey – well sort of if you use some imagination.

At Caleta Valdes (a bay) we walked down to the beach where a group of elephant seals (looked like enormous fat slugs) were lazing about on the sand. One would occasionally move a flipper, spraying sand onto their fat bodies. Because we were late, we had just missed one of them giving birth to a black pup. There was a trail of blood along the sand and a flock of seagulls vying for the placenta and birth fluids – disgusting. Apart from this, not much else was happening down there so I wasn’t too upset that we didn’t have very long to look at the seals. They were quite amusing when they tried to move. They would drag themselves for a couple of metres and then have to rest because they were so fat. Following this we had a quick peek at some more penguins and then drove back to Puerto Pirámide in time for the whales.

Our tour guide must have been practising to be a primary school teacher as she showed us flash cards of Patagonian animals she had drawn herself. I would rather have seen the real thing. According to her, the male American ostrich is the ideal husband (she wasn’t married) as he takes care of the kids and gets the food ready, allowing the female to go shopping. This was her attempt at a joke. A funnier story she told us was how a Japanese company tried to open a penguin harvesting factory down here. They wanted to turn the cute penguins into golf gloves, oil and quite possibly sushi! Thankfully, their petition was rejected.

Puerto Pirámide is the only town on the peninsula and it is the place the whale watching boats depart from. We donned life jackets and tarpaulins (makeshift raincoats) and climbed aboard our vessel – the ugliest and oldest boat there. A tractor dragged us out to sea and then we were off. I was slightly pessimistic when the captain said whale watching was a lesson in patience (I have none of that) and that we don’t go to the whales we let them come to us. What whale in its right mind would want to do that? I thought this was a pathetic excuse in case we didn’t see any.

The first whale we saw just floated there and did nothing (for all intents and purposes it may have been dead) so we moved on… and on… and on. It seemed we were sailing past every whale that was frolicking in the water and heading to Antarctica instead. I don’t know what was going on in our captain’s mind – not much I am guessing. He was hopeless. For an hour we kept chasing ghost whales. Jon asked where the whale was and the assistant replied beneath us. I did not take any comfort in knowing there was an invisible whale somewhere beneath our boat (no doubt it was deliberately never going to surface) whilst I could see tails and flippers waving at us in the distance to the left and right of us. It was like they were beckoning us to go over and see them but our captain had other plans.

Just as I had given up seeing anything of note and was cursing the captain under my breath, Jon spotted some whales playing in the distance port side and pointed them out. We about turned and headed over. I think the captain may have suspected the crew was ready for mutiny if he didn’t find us a whale. They were amazing and we got within metres of the two of them. They were huge – about 12-15 metres long and you could see all the details on them. I was a bit scared they would tip our boat over and I would be swallowed up like Jonah but if anyone deserved to be eaten it was our stupid captain. Jon and I have decided we could run a much better whale spotting business.

Once we were back on shore one and a half hours later, we headed back to Puerto Madryn. All in all, it had turned out to be a great day of whale watching.