Península Valdés

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Description

On the peninsula’s west is the village and beach of Puerto Pirámides, once a salt-mining port. Beaches nearby include Los Molinos, with an abandoned windmill, and Las Cuevas, named after the caves in its low cliffs. 

A wild and treeless tag of land, loosely linked to the Argentinian mainland and reaching out into the South Atlantic, the Peninsula Valdes is a UNESCO-registered nature reserve that’s home to a large variety of species. It’s of special appeal to anyone interested in marine wildlife, particularly whales, which throng here in the austral winter (the northern hemisphere’s summer).

With 400 km (249 miles) of shoreline, the peninsula is an untamed mass of coastal lagoons, mudflats, sandy and pebble beaches, sand dunes, and wetlands. The latter form important nesting sites for migratory seabirds, while the beaches can be busy with southern elephant seals and southern sea lions.

A four-hour drive south of the peninsula, things get wilder still. Bahía Bustamente and the Peninsula Gravina cosset an isolated and near-immaculate ecosystem. Here, petrified forests sit alongside a desert-like coastline and shell-strewn beaches, while offshore islands house thriving populations of Magellanic penguins.