day 2: whales whales whales

day 2 dawned nice and early. it was overcast, which was fabulous because it provided great visibility to see the whales, as we would find out. we left puerto madryn and took an hour long bus to puerto pirámides, where we stopped at a whale watching tour place, grabbed life jackets, threw away $260 pesos, and climbed onto a small boat.

verrr small town

wooohoo ready to see some ballenas

puerto pirámides is right on the valdez peninsula

beautiful whale watching weather

WHALES

one swam under the boat!

we started off, and immediately saw some whales in the distance. it was incredible, but i still hated feeling like a tourist with the other 30 or so people on the boat. when we got close to the whales, the guides turned off the motor completely and let the whales come to us. it was so cool....we must have seen at least 10 whales, all within the hour and a half we were on the water. just floating along in the boat made me feel less touristy too. these animals are unbelievable-- huge packs of right whales flood the peninsula to breed in december, so we got our fair share of seeing the biggest mammals on earth. as we were about to turn around and head back, two of the whales swam right up to the boat...if i had leaned out, i could have touched one! their sounds are incredible too, every few minutes we would see a puff of air out on the horizon, and it would be the air from their blowholes.

after we made it back to land, we ate our poverty lunch (tuna, avocados aka paltas, crackers, and fruit), and went to "explore" the town of pirámides. "town" meaning the one road. so we hiked up some sand dunes, got a more panoramic view of the water, and then clambered up some other sand dunes to just sit in the sand before our bus took us back to madryn.

the whole area is made up of sandstone...you can see the condensed pieces of shell that have probably been there since mankind

puerto pirámides

view from the sand dunes

a bit touristy

i think i'm going to build a house here someday

playing in the sand

after we got back to our hostel, we took well-needed showers and made dinner....with vegetables! like i've said before, the argentinos seem to live off of simple carbohydrates and sugars, with the occasional veggie drenched in salt and oil. so we decided (since we were living with #noparents) to make dinner with all vegetables. and 6 eggs. and some quilmes.

YUMMY

eggs, sauteed veggies, guac, salad

co-presidents of the cpc: clean plate club