Half ton testis but no free willy : Whale watching around the Valdes Peninsular

The Valdes Peninsular is half way up Argentina´s east coast. It´s a place made famous by a National Geographic documentary in which killer whales plucked unsuspecting pray off the beach. It´s a massive area and with us only having a day to explore we made our way to Puerto Piramides, where we hopped onto a zodiac. The powerful boat easily negotiated the surf and within a few minutes we´d found our first whale.

Last season saw 800 Southern Right Whales visiting the peninsular and our guide Nora told us that this number has been rising by around 7% a year for the last few years. Quite good news when you take into account their worldwide population, which once stood at 100,000, is now only about 3,000. We learnt all sorts of interesting stuff but the bit that amazed me was that the 13m long males have testicles that weigh in at half a ton (EACH). The sheer number of whales, that travel to the peninsular both for calmer waters and to calve, was way beyond our expectations. Looking out from the boat at any one time there was always one jumping, waving a fin or proudly holding it´s tail out. Our last encounter on the boat was truly spectacular with a mother and calf playing happily around us for 20 minutes. They were totally at ease and got so close that the skipper actually had to move us out of the way.

The next part of the tour saw us travelling to a beach that dropped away steeply into the ocean, with whales passing only a few metres from the shore. Certainly a better and more natural way of witnessing these magical creatures at play. We left the reserve and drove north for over an hour, pulling off the main road just before sunset and setting up camp. Unbelievably the beach we had found was like the one from earlier in the day with whales in abundance. A dozen or so passed by wanting to have a look at what was going on. Falling asleep to the sound of lapping waves and passing whales was a surreal and fairly unique experience.