The Whales of the Strait

One major highlight of any Patagonian cruise is the wildlife. From the decks of any vessel, and on land excursions, passengers can enjoy the sight of countless birds – many of them unique to the Southern Hemisphere – and marine mammals such as elephant seals and sea lions. Literally and metaphotically, though, the biggest attraction is the whales.

On Argentina’s Península Valdés, Puerto Pirámides (pictured above) is the continent’s main whale-watching site; from July (mid-winter) to November (late spring), pods of southern right whales arrive to mate and give birth. Most visitors arrive from the town of Puerto Madryn, which has cruise-ship facilities, though Madryn gets many more overland travelers. Most Pirámides vessels are larger catamarans that can seem crowded, though it’s not quite mass tourism – some smaller rigid inflatables get closer to the animals.

For visitors to southern Patagonia, though, there are more intimate options, viewing southern humpbacks (pictured above) in the western Strait of Magellan. In January and February, operating out of Punta Arenas, Cruceros Australis does special whale-watching itineraries that make a detour to Isla Carlos III before returning to their usual Beagle Channel route to Cape Horn and Ushuaia. In rigid inflatables, passengers can get even closer to these gregarious (and enormous) animals.

I’ve never taken that specific itinerary, but I have visited the western Strait on two other occasions. A decade ago, I took one of the earliest trips with Whalesound, which converted a small river vessel from Argentina in a comfortable shuttle for a dozen or so travelers to Isla Carlos III, where it had set up a dome-tent camp (pictured above) connected by boardwalks to its dining room/clubhouse (pictured below). During the day, the ship took us to see the whales, but it was also possible to hike to sea lion and penguin colonies.

More recently, in January, I took a two-night one-day excursion on board the M/V Forrest (pictured above) with Punta Arenas’s Expedición Fitz Roy, which has rehabbed a vessel that formerly hauled wool around the Falkland Islands, where I first saw it in 1982. The accommodations are cozy – cabins with two or four bunks each – but the dining lounge is comfortable and the exterior decks provide plenty of opportunity for cetacean close-ups. The Forrest also makes a side trip to Isla Santa Inés (pictured below), shuttling passengers ashore for close-ups of the glacier there.

Refueling at "Patagonian Prices"

Though it may not look like much, Sierra Grande is still a welcome sight to southbound motorists on Argentina's Ruta Nacional 3, the highway that starts in Buenos Aires and ends, 3,200 km later, at Bahía Lapataia, in Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. That's because Sierra Grande is the northernmost point where motorists like myself can fill the tank at, "Patagonian prices," a discount from rates in the rest of the country.

That's presuming fuel is available, which is no sure thing this summer. Monday morning, I left the city of Viedma with three-quarters of a tank, plenty to cover the 300 km to Sierra Grande, where I could fill up more cheaply. When I passed the city of San Antonio Oeste, though, I became a bit concerned – a little more than halfway to Sierra Grande, it had huge lines at its only service station, and I wondered whether northbound drivers had been unable to fill up there. I’d already seen long gas lines in Villa La Angostura, San Martín de los Andes and elsewhere, so this might become an issue.

As it turned out, my concerns were overblown. Sierra Grande has several service stations, and the longest was at the state-run YPF, which is the cheapest – high-octane super costs 7.14 pesos per liter (roughly US$3.94 per gallon at the official rate, but only $2.71 per gallon at the “blue dollar” rate). This is about 20 percent cheaper than fuel farther north.

Some years ago, longer than I care to remember, “Patagonian prices” for fuel were barely half what they were in the rest of Argentina, thanks to a tax break that supposedly encouraged settlement and economic activity in this thinly populated part of the country. Given how the differential has declined in recent years, that may be on the way out and, in any event, the price doesn’t matter much if there’s no supply. When I arrived at the village of Puerto Pirámides (pictured above), gateway to the wildlife paradise of Península Valdés, its only station had been without fuel for several days, with the nearest available at Puerto Madryn – a distance of nearly 100 km.

Pacific Northwest Penguins?

I don’t usually promote events other than my own, but readers in the Pacific Northwest will soon have several opportunities to learn something about Patagonian natural history as Dee Boersma, professor of conservation science at the University of Washington (purely coincidentally, my undergraduate alma mater). She will present her new book, Penguins: Natural History and Conservation at several events in the area.

Boersma has worked for more than three decades at Argentina’s Reserva Provincial Punta Tombo (pictured above and below), one of the world’s largest Magellanic penguin nesting sites. The book itself is more global, with coverage of all 18 penguin species, as the UW Press’s blurb notes that "The fragile status of most penguin populations today mirrors the troubled condition of the southern oceans, as well as larger marine conservation problems: climate change, pollution, and fisheries mismanagement.”

To promote the book, and the conservation issues that accompany it, Boersma and her Argentine colleague Pablo García Boroboglu will appear tonight at the REI Seattle flagship store as part of a larger conservation-oriented event. On Tuesday, May 14, they will also hold a “Penguins in Peril” event at Seattle’s Town Hall and, on Thursday, May 16, a similar talk at Bellingham’s Village Books (where I have spoken several times).

I have never met Professor Boersma in person, though I am familiar with her work and have spoken with her on the phone. For penguin lovers, who are so numerous, and anyone else interested in the critical topic of maritime conservation in the new millennium, this should be a can’t-miss event, and I look forward to reading and reviewing the book some time in the near future.

Those of you planning to see penguins in the wild, though will probably have to wait a while. At Punta Tombo, only a few stragglers remain of the 200,000 breeding pairs that burrow along the shoreline. They’ll be back in the southern spring but, meanwhile, nearby Península Valdés will soon be the attraction for the arrival of southern right whales, which breed and give birth in the shallow, sheltered waters of the Golfo Nuevo.

Patagon Journal Takes Off; Cape Horn's in Dutch

A few months ago, I mentioned the fund-raising efforts of Puerto Varas-based Jimmy Langman to launch a print version of his bilingual Patagon Journal. As I watched the deadline approach and donation pledges appeared to be barely trickling in online, I have to admit that I was pessimistic that he would garner enough funds for this worthwhile project.

I’m delighted to admit that I was wrong. In an email I received a few days, Jimmy reports that he was “happy to report that the magazine is to leave Gráfica Andes printers in Santiago tomorrow and will be on sale at newsstands in Santiago and other cities and towns around Chile this weekend. The magazine will also soon be available at several other outlets in Chile, including the Patagonia and Andesgear stores throughout the country.”

Jimmy’s campaign, organized through Kickstarter.com, “successfully raised modest funding…including securing a major sponsorship deal with the Quiksilver Foundation. We recently received a small grant from the Weeden Foundation in the United States. That, coupled with a Herculean effort to sell some ads to a new magazine still not yet in print, has finally gotten this effort off the ground.”

I haven’t yet seen a hard copy of the 80-page magazine, but Jimmy has sent me a PDF version that shows the Journal’s promising content. Among the stories are his own extended interview with environmental philanthropist Doug Tompkins (whose wife Kristine I have interviewed and published recently in this blog), Jack Miller’s exploration of the truly remote Cordillera Sarmiento, and Evelyn Pfeiffer’s account of the Paine Circuit’s creation. The video above, narrated in Jimmy’s Spanish, provides an idea of the content.

Other articles include Héctor Kol’s analysis of the salmon industry’s travails and Tim Vandenack’s tale of hitchhiking the Carretera Austral (pictured above). The coverage is not exclusively Chilean – as witness Península Valdés and its great right whales, the new Glaciarium ice museum (pictured below) in El Calafate, and restaurants and book reviews, plus some stunning photography.

All in all, it’s a promising debut that will require dedication to expand its circulation – while the print media are still important in Chile, producing a newsstand magazine remains a demanding task. Readers can do their part by subscribing to Patagon Journal online, or purchasing it at Chilean newsstands.

Disclaimer: I am a member of the Journal’s Editorial Advisory, but have no financial interest whatsoever in it. It is essentially an honorary position.

Cape Horn’s in Dutch

Known as Cabo de Hornos in Spanish, Cape Horn is South America’s southernmost tip, and notorious as a graveyard for sailing ships – to whose crews the wandering albatross sculpture atop Chile’s Isla Hornos pays tribute. The Cape’s original name, though, is Kap Hoorn, named by navigators from the Dutch city of Hoorn in the 17th century.

As the 400th anniversary of Cape Horn’s discovery approaches, Chilean and Dutch authorities are collaborating on a series of events to commemorate the role of sailors such as Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire (whose name graces the strait between the big island of Tierra del Fuego and its outlier of Staten Island; the latter was originally a Dutch name, since converted into Spanish as Isla de los Estados). At the moment, only the Chilean operator Cruceros Australis is authorized to put passengers ashore at Isla Hornos, on cruises between Punta Arenas and Ushuaia, but Argentine operators continue to hope for future access – from Ushuaia, it would be just a day trip to stand at the tip of the Americas.

In Patagonia: a Poorly Planned Road Trip

Last Sunday’s New York Times travel section featured Latin America and, but for a piece on Panamá and brief mentions of Belize and Nicaragua, it’s almost entirely on South America. It goes from the top (Colombia) to the tip (Patagonia), and even included a two-page spread on Suriname, an underrated destination that I once covered for a rival guidebook company whose name is best left unmentioned.

I almost always appreciate coverage of a region that gets so little attention from the mainstream press but, that said, an account of a so-called “road trip” through Argentine Patagonia was a botched opportunity. Author Brienne Walsh planned to drive the legendarily desolate Ruta 40 – which I have described as “Patagonia’s loneliest road” - south from Bariloche to El Calafate. In the article, she claims that a well-known international car rental agency would not allow her and a friend to take their vehicle down the route because of safety concerns, specifically “black ice and potholes.”

That’s not totally unreasonable. While I’ve driven this route at least ten times, I’ve never done so in winter. At the same time, it’s not so much the road conditions – much of Ruta 40 is now well-paved and potholes are fewer even in the remaining gravel sections – as the shortage of services.  Beyond Esquel, about 300 km south of Walsh’s starting point, fuel, food and accommodations are even scarcer than in summer.

Thus, Walsh and her companion had to make the long drive southeast across the steppe from Esquel to Comodoro Rivadavia. Even though they did take advantage of the route to visit the remarkable Bosque Petrificado Sarmiento (pictured above), a fascinating petrified forest, before heading south of Comodoro, they wasted much of the limited winter daylight.

In fact, poor planning caused them to miss at least one major attraction. Their hotel porter in Bariloche suggested they visit Puerto San Julián, which they finally skipped in favor of continuing south to Río Gallegos and El Calafate. I can’t disagree with that, especially in winter, but they totally missed the route’s most appealing destination, the dramatic headlands of wildlife-rich Parque Nacional Monte León (pictured above), midway between San Julián and Río Gallegos. While the wildlife is less abundant in winter, the scenery on this brief detour is still rewarding.

Certainly Walsh and her companion deserve credit for visiting the Moreno Glacier in winter, when there are far fewer visitors. But their trip would have gone much better had they started in Puerto Madryn – gateway to the whale-watching site of Península Valdés (pictured above) – and avoided the long drive across the Patagonian steppe. They could still have detoured to the petrified forest and had time to visit Monte León as well. As it was, poor planning led to lost opportunities.

Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires in Millbrae (San Mateo County)

Thursday September 29 will mark the last of four digital slide presentations on the fourth edition of Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires, at various branches of the San Mateo Public Library. This event starts at 1 p.m. at the Millbrae Library (1 Library Avenue, Millbrae, CA 94030, tel. 650/697-7607). There will be ample time for questions and answers, and books (also including Moon Argentina and Moon Chile) will be on sale (at a discount).

Next month, I will be on the road promoting the new third edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia. Most of the events will be in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I will also be appearing in Seattle and Bellingham, Washington; Vancouver BC; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Pasadena, California. Watch this space for details.

Winter Whale Watch: the Word from Madryn

Recently I wrote about the Southern Cone winter, stressing skiing in Argentina and Chile, but the Patagonian coast is also a worthwhile winter destination – in Argentina, at least. Except in the desert north, where upwelling from the Humboldt Current keeps the waters cool all year, the Chilean coastline tends to be wet and inhospitable in winter.

On the Argentine side the climate can be cool but, by contrast, the air is dry and the famous Patagonian winds tend to abate at this time of year. That’s partly why coastal Chubut province, in particular, has become a popular destination for Argentine winter holidays.

Primarily, though, it’s the abundance of wildlife on nearby Península Valdés that gives the city of Puerto Madryn (pictured at top, courtesy of María Alicia Sacks) a longer tourist season than most of the region. The village of Puerto Pirámides (pictured above and below), which is actually on the peninsula, is more convenient for watching the southern right whales that frolic along the eastern shore of the Golfo Nuevo, but its accommodations and other services are fewer than the larger city’s.

Consequently, most visitors to the region stay at Madryn and visit Valdés as a day trip – although, in fact, whales also breach beneath the headlands at Playa El Doradillo (pictured below, courtesy of María Alicia Sacks), only 15 minutes from downtown. This year, though, the June eruption of Chile’s Volcán Puyehue has reduced air travel to the city, which is 1,300 km south of Buenos Aires, making long-distance buses the preferred option. That’s a 20-hour marathon from the capital, but services range from merely comfortable to fully reclining seats that provide nearly as much space as business class on international flights.


The View from Buenos Aires and Puerto Madryn
For the latest from the region, I recently exchanged emails with two friends, Silvina Garay of Say Hueque Travel in Buenos Aires and María Alicia Sacks of Puerto Madryn’s municipal Secretaría de Turismo. I translate their comments in the following paragraphs.

WBB: Has the ashfall affected flights to Puerto Madryn and Trelew?

Silvina Garay: Yes, Puerto Madryn’s airport is very small and normally has only a few flights. All the same Madryn, and the principal airport at Trelew, have had no flights for a month. Most of our clients have decided to take buses.

María Alicia Sacks: The real problem is that suspended ash is keeping the flights from arriving. This is because of the ash plume that’s blowing over Patagonia and, depending on the wind, is reaching our coast, just as it’s affected Aeroparque [Buenos Aires’s domestic airport) and Ezeiza [the capital’s international airport].

WBB: Have you noticed any reduction in the numbers of foreign travelers because of the volcano, as they would usually travel by plane?

SG: It’s really hard to measure because it’s low season here, when passenger numbers always decline. And we don’t work much with the Brazilian market, which is the biggest national market in winter. It’s true that most of our clients travel by plane, but we haven’t received any abnormal number of cancellations because of the ash.

WBB: What about the whale-watching season at Península Valdés? Has demand for hotels and tours fallen because of the volcano?

SG: I can’t say in detail. From our point of view [in Buenos Aires], it’s about the same as last year.

MAS: All the services are operating fully. Just the other day we had a great whale-watching trip in Puerto Pirámides.

WBB: Is there anything else worth mentioning?

SG: I would re-emphasize that Península Valdés and Bariloche are both destinations with good long-distance bus service. Many of our clients who had to take the bus because the ash closed the airports were glad they did so.

MAS: I can’t say exactly when the flights will start up again. It all depends on the ash. Clearly this has had an economic impact on us.

Help Support Southern Cone Travel
If you have found this article informative, please consider clicking on one or more of the AdSense links that accompany it - always presuming, of course, that it’s a product or service that interests you.