After a light night’s sleep courtesy of rowdy room mates (who sings in the shower at 1am when they know others are trying to sleep?), set out for Península Valdés, traveling through the flat plains of typical Patagonia. On the way we spotted burrowing parrots, maras, burrowing owls, turkey vultures, guanacos and the more domesticated fauna – sheep.
Patagonia isn’t all vast glaciers and soaring mountain peaks 
Turkey Vultures 
Guanacos have lovely lashes 
Guanacos 
Guanacos don’t need no fences 
Mara mum and her mini-maras
In Puerto Pirámides we boarded a catamaran for a whale watching cruise and weren’t disappointed. We were treated to some very close encounters of the southern right whale kind, mother and calves pairs who are quite used to the motors, so I’m told. We got a lot closer than boats in Australia are allowed to venture. I guess the world is just different everywhere you go. The ride back was choppy and the port closed after we got back due to bad weather.
No jetties, just tractors to pull the boats out of the water. As you do. 
Onto Punta Cantor to view elephant seals and pups lounging on the beach where they hang out after galumphing up the channels in the low tide waters. See the little grey shapes in the photo – they’re elephant seals. The views from on top of the cliff stretch for miles without interruption and the wind doesn’t hold back either.
Vocal elephant seals 
Elephant seals 
Elephant seal colony 
Big daddy taking a time out
A group of lesser rhea hatchlings came right up to us at the visitor centre, with dad in tow, so cute with the wind blowing their downy wings and tails up at the back like they’re wearing skirts. We stopped by a small and relatively newly established colony of Magellanic penguins, there will be many more on my excursion to Punto Tombo tomorrow.
Magellanic penguins – Punta Cantor 
Punta Cantor, Peninsula De Valdes 
Punta Cantor 
The flat pampas desert meets the windy sea at Punta Cantor 
Rocking the ‘windswept’ look
I have spent the day with Kagan, a lovely lady from the US who is spending her retirement money traveling…sounds a little familiar 😉 She is staying at the same hostel, except she gets to share her room with boys, lucky thing! We will meet again on the trip tomorrow.
Having met some people it’s made me realize I am actually lonely, and not exactly much of a joiner – I’ll have to work on that almost as much as my Spanish…es no muy bueno!
Oh Bec, loneliness feelings come and go. Travel is lonely much of the time, but not all the time. We are here listening, to every post, and with you every step. I’m looking up every place name on gmaps. Reminds me of being in wondrous Peru.
You start to feel lonely, when you move from place to place, because you do not have familiar faces around you and everything is new. As you go on you’ll know why you are there. You must have already realized this.
Awww sounds amazing!!! We’re all just on the other side of ur blog so don’t be lonely xxxxxx