Camerones
Camerones is on the way to Peninsula Valdez. The name translates to “Shrimps”; probably due to its fisher village nature. Some 20km south of the village is a national reserve for the magellan penguin colony. The penguins there are not shy but you need to stick to the metal walkway that has been built over the colony.
So without further ado: Lots of penguins being cute penguins!
Puerto Piramides on Valdez
The peninsula Valdez is fully owned privately by a bunch of animal farmers which use the are for their animals. They did band together and allow for the wildlife to flourish at the sea shores and they manage the area well in that regard. Due to this there is also a checkpoint before puerto piramides where you have to pay an entry fee.
It was very noticeable that the season here was already over. As you can see from the penguin calendar above, the penguins were mostly gone and the same seems to be true for most other animals. There were a few sea lions and elephants left but the bulk of them was already gone. This is also a reason the orca beaching attacks were becoming more infrequent. Puerto Piramides was also basically dead with most restaurants closed and the hostel – while being in a bad state already – only had a handful of guests.
Some french dudes told me that there is a beach in the north of the island where orcas intentionally beach themselves to feed on the sea lion colony that stays there. We hung out for almost the entire high tide period but sadly we did not see any orcas. A sign said that the last sighting was 4 days prior. I imagine that during peak season you can see them every day.
The Armadillo
On the parking lot there was a very cute and hungry armadillo looking for food. They kind of remind me of a hedgehog. I wonder if they are related.
Puerto Madryn
Back in Puerto Madryn (the closest larger town) I went for a run on the beach and then tried looking for a restaurant that was open to eat some fish. It was the siesta though and basically every decent restaurant would only open after 19:00. I wanted to get some driving in that day so I left before and bought some seafood in the supermarket to make a paella some other day.
Before that I did go to a local heladeria though to get myself a bucket of ice cream and some alfajores. Both were of course very delicious. What blew me away the most however was the giant selection of different ice cream flavors they had.
