Watching Whales

Another hot day in Patagonia. I checked out of my hotel on the beach and went up the street to another hotel that was much cheaper. The new hotel offered much simpler accommodations, but I had a nice room overlooking a quiet courtyard, with some adjacent trails that went up to the hill overlooking the town.

Later in the morning, I went on a two-hour whale watching trip around the Golfo Nuevo. After checking in at the office on the main street of town, I joined a group of Brazilian tourists in preparation for the voyage. We donned our life jackets and then walked a short distance down to the beach. It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect weather for a boat trip.

Puerto Pirámides has an unusual and innovative way of getting passengers loaded onto boats and getting the boats into and out of the water. The beach here is wide and flat, with a substantial difference between high and low tide. Passengers board the boat, which is "docked" on the beach, via a staircase ladder that leads up to the deck of the boat. Big amphibious tractors are then used to push the boats off the beach and out into the deep water.

Pushing the boat from the beach out into the Golfo Nuevo

Shortly after leaving Puerto Pirámides, we passed by Punta Pirámides, where sea lions bask on the rocks below the pyramid-shaped mountain that gives the town its name. The boat slowed down and we drifted quietly up toward the shore to get a closer look at these lobos marinos.

But the main thing we came to see was the southern right whale (Eubalaena australis). Between May and December of each year, this cetacean is a frequent resident of the Golfo Nuevo. These baleen whales move into this area from the South Atlantic Ocean, to mate and give birth to their calves, taking advantage of the calmer and warmer waters of the protected gulf.

The southern right whale is not an endangered species, although there are only about 10,000 of them in the world, inhabiting the southern oceans from South America to South Africa to Australia to Antarctica. They were once hunted extensively; the name comes from whalers who considered this the "right" whale to hunt, due to its slow swimming behavior and the large quantity of oil produced by each animal.

We moved around the gulf slowly, keeping an eye out for the telltale spouting of a whale. The southern right whales are famous for their vigorous breaching and spyhopping, and these whales did not disappoint us. Off the starboard bow, a whale rose up out of the water at a 45 degree angle, did a short twist, then slammed its body with tremendous force down against the surface of the sea.

The intensity of the trip seemed to increase with each passing minute. Soon we had a whale approach our boat, swimming right up to the side and surfacing just inches away from us. We were able to get a close up look at the face and body of the beast, encrusted with barnacles and piojos ballenas (whale lice).

We got out into the middle of the gulf and were able to see a few whales here and there, rising up out of the water and diving back down with an ostentatious flick of the tail. Our naturalist on board the boat was Sergio, who explained to us that when a whale shows its tail that way, it means that it is about to take a deep dive, so we probably wouldn't see it again for a while.

The whale moved around the boat, looking at us as much as we were looking at it. We soon realized that there were many other whales around us, in all directions, including a number of mothers with their calves. A hundred meters away, a whale rose straight up out of the water in a spyhopping position, bringing more than three fourths of its body above the surface of the sea. Truly a wild connection with the natural world.

When we got back to Puerto Pirámides, I took a walk out onto the cliffs next to the beach. I now had a better idea of the geography of the peninsula and the gulf, having seen so much of it from the water. I found a quiet place to sit and look out across the gulf, taking in Punta Ninfas and Cerro Morro Nuevo, the two distant points that form the narrow entrance to the gulf.

Sitting on my cliffside perch under the hot Patagonian sun, I looked out and saw the now familiar movement in the water that signaled the surfacing of a whale. And there it was, the graceful movement of the whale rising up, then arcing its back and flicking its tail as it went for the deep dive. A few minutes later, another whale surfaced, this time doing a full spyhop. I sat there in utter amazement of the scene in front of me. Here I am, a mere human being sitting on a Patagonian cliff, while the theater of nature is displayed in front of me. A theater production that takes place every day, whether there is an audience or not. Bravo.

Milanesa de Pollo

By mid-afternoon, I began to feel hungry, in spite of the heat of the day. I walked back into town and found a restaurant just a half block from the beach, with a nice outdoor table in the shade. I had a great lunch of Milanesa de Pollo (chicken cutlet), with a salad and some ice cold mineral water.

After lunch I drove up to Punta Pirámides, about five kilometers outside of town. This cliffside mirador (overlook) has a sweeping view of the same sea lion rookery I had seen from the boat earlier in the day. A few sea lions were frolicking on the rocks below, while another large group of them basked in the sun on top of wide flat marine terrace. Beyond them was the wide blue expanse of the Golfo Nuevo, with the Patagonian mainland visible along the distant horizon.

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