The Circle of Life

We arrived in Patagonia a few days ago, having survived our eighteen hour bus trip. Yay! The highlight of the bus trip may have been the Lion King music videos featuring Elton John badly superimposed on scenes from the movie.

In Patagonia, we're staying in Puerto Madryn, a small city built on a beautiful port. While the town developed around shipping and industrial activities like aluminum fabrication, the main business these days is tourists like ourselves, who come to checking out the marine wildlife.

We took a day trip to Peninsula Valdez, a wildlife sanctuary 60 km from Puerto Madryn, to see said animals. The peninsula was pretty spectacular: on the drive there, we saw nandu (an ostrich like bird) and guanaco (a llama like animal). On the peninsula itself, we viewed penguins, the only continental colony of elephant seals, and sea lions. While we were most interested in the penguins and elephant seals, it was the sea lions that captured our hearts. We had arrived a particularly good time for watching them, and our tour guide told us that we would see them fighting, swimming, and eating. And, she added, "Perhaps even a birth! Why not!"

As it turns out, we did get to see a birth and as an added bonus, a flock of seabirds devouring the placenta. We were also treated to the sights of sea lions fighting and copulating, all accompanied by the unique musky smell of sea lions in heat. Ah nature, so magical! The other animals were comparatively calm: the elephant seals were in fact so docile I initially mistook them for driftwood. -EMW