It-s a whale!!!

I decided to go to Peninsula Valdes with a tour because I couldn-t find anyone to rent a car with. Guys from the hostal went there already. I set off today at 8 am together with eight people, a driver, and a guide. To the south of the peninsula and back it-s four hundred km. First we went to southernmost tip of the peninsula = Punta Delgada where a lighthouse is. It-s a place where it-s possible to see the elephant seals (Mirounga Leonina). The guide Federico told us that we will be lucky if we see any wildlife because it-s not really the season for the animals to be here (I am using the screwed up computer at the hostal, hence the strange symbols); whales just begin to come for their breeding season and other animals left to feed in other places and will be back in the spring in September. We approached the dunes and YES! saw a small colony of elephant seals. They are bigger than sea lions and don-t use their hind fins to walk the way sea lions do. They move like worms. Because the season ended a few weeks ago and we were the only tourists there we quietly went down to the beach and got closer to them. A few of them looked at us in surprise, yawned (covering their mouths with their fins), stretched, changed the position and went back to sleep. A young seal which was closest to me looked at me very curiously and when I yawned she yawned too, I scratched my head and she scratched her side. I told her I loved her and asked her to give my best regards to her family. Words were not needed = she and I belong to the same world and sense the same things in the same way. Have you seen a seal's eyes from up close? There-s everything in them: past, present and future. We were sitting on the sand, next to the seals, observing them and the ones which were playing in the water or sunbathing in the distance. Some of them were swimming laisurely along the beach. We saw a few males sparring in twos = it was just sparring as it is too early to be competing for women. It was hard for us to leave but there were other points on the coast we wanted to visit. We went to Puerto Piramides first. It's a small village, the only village on Peninsula Valdes, which makes a living by servicing the national park. There are a few restaurants in the village and we had lunch in one of them. I was sitting at a table with Federico and the driver Dario, and through them I met a legend_capitan who was involved in establishing the park and spend his life working for protection of the whales and fauna of the region. From Puerto Piramides it was a short drive to Punta Piramida where from the cliff we saw a colony of the sea lions belonging to the same species I saw earlier in Punta Loma. They are much more energetic than the elephant seals and one of the girls in the group said that they looked as if they were arguing all the time. They lie down silently and then one "says" something and the rest has to add their three words. There's a conversation, getting into argument, and then they quiet down... until someone says something again. Sometimes someone gets offended and hops into the water to escape all this gossip and arguments. We also saw two Magellan Penguins and some black cormorants. We started to head back to Puerto Madryn with intention to see if we could spot a whale around the place where I went with Claudio and Max the other day. We were standing on a cliff and YES! we saw a dark shape and then YES! a fountain and then YES! a HUGE TAIL coming out of the water. We saw him coming out and diving down many times. He stayed in the same spot and was just diving constantly. We didn't see his wole body because he didn't jump but we were happy with what we saw. We were very lucky! The whales who come to the New Gulf (Golfo Nuevo) are called the Southern Right Whales (Ballena Franca Austral). They come to the gulf to breed because the conditions for giving birth here are perfect: the gulf is protected from winds by a high cliff and when there's high tide they can come closer to the shore where there are almost no waves and the water is warm. So today we just saw one of them, maybe the first to come this season, but in the breeding season there are many of them and you can just sit on the cliff and watch them. There's no need to go on the boat, although there's a posibility to go on a small boat (a dinghy really) but after the young are born so the moms are not disturbed during labour. (Julian is playing with my foot = he just chewed up a hole in my Peruvian sock and he also wiped his mouth with it. I adore him!). When we saw him we got extremally ecstatic. The guide had to drag us back to the car. I think everyone was ready to camp out until complete darkness. Along the way we also saw a type of a low/altitude Llama which never got domestiacted and is roaming free, a type of ostrich, an owl, a skunk walking very close totally unafraid, a few horses running around, lots and lots of sheep belonging to two big estancias grazing on the low grass and bushes. We also saw a few cows. I greeted them with a loud "Moooooo" and they looked up, stopped chewing for a second and looked at each other in disbelief "Is she kidding us? She can never be one of us" and they slowly walked away, offended. With the sheep we also saw many border collies because they are the ones watching over and herding the flocks. Because there are so many sheep in this region there are also many border collies in Puerto Madryn and if a dog is not totally a border collie one of his ancestors definitely was = most dogs look like border collie mixes. The animals we didn-t see where armadillo (Federico said that since the season ended they prefer to stay at home and watch tv instead of entertaining tourists), an animal which looks like a mix of a rabbit and dog, and orcas aka killer whales. Orcas can be seen in the north tip of the peninsula and people at the hostal in San Telmo told me they saw them a month ago (we didn't go to Punta Norte because they are gone now). Orcas have a habit of coming directly to the beach and attacking young seals who play in the shallow water. The people saw it but I think I would prefer not to see this... It would be better for me to see them from the boat in the water. Orcas are a type of dolphin but they are the only dolphins who eat other mammals. I would prefer that they were vegeterians or at least fish=eating creatures...

I am going to Rio Gallegos tomorrow. It-s another 20 hours on the bus but it-s getting colder so I will bypass the cities (which in Patagonia look alike since they are all new = the history of European settlement in this part of Argentina is not long, about 100_150 years) on the coast and go to Rio since it is close to Ushuaia _ the end of the world. I got a nice winter jacket and I am already using my Inca hat, mittens and socks. I hope it will be enough for Tierra del Fuego because I have no space in my backpack for any new things!

I really like Puerto Madryn = everything about it. I checked the prices of homes and apartments and they are the cheapest I saw during my travels. If I don-t get any better idea of what to do with the rest of my life, I will come back here, establish a cafe (this place lacks Le Pain Quotidien or any such place with communal table and herbal teas) , buy a bike and ride to visit my marine friends and walk on the beach with dogs (mine and city dogs) every day.

I will be in touch when I get to the end of the world!