Valdes Peninsula - Whale watching

Just watching these creatures swim 5 metres away was captivating but to then hop into a boat & have them dive right under your feet was something else.
The Valdes Peninsula is situated in Northern Patagonia. We'd driven for 2 days to get here & & I'll admit I was somewhat sceptical about just how good Whale watching was going to be.

We'd stayed over night in self catering accommodation in Puerto Madryn & our host then become our guide around the national park the following day. We first stopped en route to the peninsula, walking down to the beach to watch the mother whales swimming along the beach, upside down just a few metres from the shore. They apparently do this to stop the calves sucking & the males from attempting to mate again. There must have been 40 individuals at this location but our guide informed us that the zoologists have id on over 1100 that return every 3 years to calve in the sheltered peninsula waters.

We drove into the national park & hopped on a tourist boat. The nature reserve status of the park means that no harbour or landing station can be built; so all boats have to beach launch.

The sight of these huge animals swimming, breaching & signaling with their tails was well worth the 100's of kms that we'd driven. I spotted a further 30 Southern Right Whales out at sea & followed 4-5 of them as they splashed around in the freezing 5C Atlantic waters.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=1152469498834114615