Sea Lions fighting over the girls

Today, we went to Peninsula Valdez. It's about 2 hours drive from Trelew. It's mostly a national park.

To get to it, you cross a strip of land that is maybe 4km wide, and then you arrive on the peninsula, which goes East about 50km, and is about 100km South to North.

On the coast, it's known for big whales, killer whales, small dolphins, sea lions, and sea elephants. We were not the right season for the big whales, and unfortunately no sight of killer whales or dolphins, but heh as the kids remind me we saw big whales in Iceland, and we saw dolphins in Australia. What was new for them was the sea lions and sea elephants, and on land armadillos and cuis ( like hamsters).

The sea elephants were unexciting as the adults had all disappeared off to sea, as they had done their child rearing for the year, bringing 20kg babies to the world and then fattening them to 90kg The 90kg 2.5 month olds basically lay around waiting for their coats to molt before they too head off to sea.

The sea lions, on the other hand, were much more active, especially the males. We saw multiple harems of dominant males, with typically 10-30 females. They were repeatedly attacked by young males trying to displace the dominant males. However, in all cases we saw, the young males failed. Usually, they just withdrew before a physical contact occurred. In one case, a young male fell down the steep embankment into the sea after he was repelled.

One animal we saw that we hadn't expected was armadillo. These appear unafraid of humans and the 1st one we saw in a car park. Soon after, we saw a few more.Read more