The Valdes Peninsula
The time had come to visit the world famous Valdes Peninsula and do some wildlife spotting! We had a car, and we had two days. It’s a lot bigger than we imagined – the main places to visit are out on the coast and so even staying inside the park in Puerto Pirámides, we were looking at a 150km loop on the first day, and a 200km loop on second day. AND – the roads are all gravel with a 60kmh speed limit – so as the designated ‘Gravel Road’ driver, I would have my work cut out (if you can call driving around a national park looking for animals ‘work’… yeah I guess not…)
We had stopped at the visitor centre and the ‘Island of birds’ on the way in, and to be honest, the ‘Island of birds’ was not so exciting – as even with binoculars it was too far away to really see anything in detail.
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Driving around was actually nice and relaxing – hardly any cars or tour buses – YES – and that’s because it was Christmas Day – MERRY CHRISTMAS US! We got very quiet roads and animals for Christmas 🙂 🙂
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The peninsula is pretty much flat, dry, scrubby farmland, so not much in the way of amazing scenery – but although it’s famous mostly for its marine life – especially killer whales – there is a fair bit of other wildlife around the area.
Now I know that you are all thinking….’DID THEY SEE A KILLER WHALE? DID THEY?’
Well, we arrived at the main place where they hang out, and we found this sign:
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We timed our visit to arrive at high tide – as this is when the Orcas are able to come into the lagoon and be spotted. We had been there around an hour, and then suddenly, out of nowhere….
… an armadillo appeared…. OK so that’s pretty good – but unfortunately there were no Orca sightings for us 🙁 🙁 🙁 Yeah, most people don’t see one – in fact I have never met anyone who saw one.. (but then again, I don’t actually ask everyone do I?)
We actually saw a lot of animals on our first day driving around, and not very many at all on the second day of driving around – so it felt like we really did get a Christmas present of animals 🙂
On our second day of driving around we discovered some scenery in the form of the ‘Salina Chica’ – which although called ‘Chica’ (Small) is HUGE (But smaller than the Salina Grande, also on the peninsula) It’s a salt lake – and in summer it drys out, and you can walk on it! EXCITING HEY?!
It’s on the tourist map, but the road/track to get there doesn’t look too appealing to drive down in a rental car. After our usual discussion of – ‘Is that track definitely OK for a 2 wheel drive car’ – we went for it. CC was sceptical, and seemed to have her eyes closed for some of the way… 🙂 But it was worth it – it was great down there – and we went for a walk on the big salt lake – trying not to get wet feet in the bits that had not dried out, and not to lose sight of the shore in case we got lost.
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After the Salt Lake it was back to the normal roads again. There was no wildlife on the Salt Lake but we saw plenty elsewhere on the peninsula – watch this space…