Whales and seals and sea lions, oh my!

I woke up early this morning, or rather, I was supposed to wake up early to meet up with my tour group but overslept and was woken up by one of the hostel staff members instead (oops!). Despite oversleeping, we still left before dawn for Península Valdés, a nature preserve located outside of Puerto Madryn.

Península Valdés provides a sheltered breeding ground for Southern Right Whales, sea lions, and seals, and the land within the park is home to guanacos (similar to llamas), eagles, foxes and and other small fauna.

On the way into the park, we stopped at Playa Doradillo, where, due to a steep drop off close to the shore, whales occasionally swim almost up to the beach. Lucky for us, this morning the whales were up early, unlike me!:

We continued on into the park, which actually is mostly divided into estancias however the areas important to the marine mammals that come to the park are protected. At Puerto Pirámides our group boarded a boat for a whale-watching expedition. Luckily, there were tons of whales:

Towards the end of the whale-watching, one of the whales jumped several times:

After the boat trip, our tour group continued on to the sea lion and elephant seal breeding grounds. Unfortunately, their active season is during the summer and fall, so there was not a whole lot going on.

Sea lions doing next to nothing.

Elephant seals really doing nothing -- according to our tour guide, they don´t have sweat glands, so when they are relaxing on the shore, they avoid moving around so as not to overheat. During the breeding season, the entire beach is filled with seals, and orcas (killer whales) swim up onto the beach to eat the seals.

After watching the seals for a while, our tour headed back to the hostel, where found I had two new Uruguayan roommates, José and Bruno, who will be driving an 86 VW Bug from Montevideo to Machu Picchu and back:

And yes, that is the same sweater, apparently there is only one type of sweater in Uruguay!