Puerto Madryn is a base rather than a destination. Almost everything you came to see is somewhere else — 17 kilometres away, or 100, or 170 — and, more importantly, it is only there in certain months. Get the month wrong and you drive 340 kilometres to look at an empty beach. This page is the map, the distances and, underneath them, the calendar that decides everything.
Península Valdés hangs off the coast on a neck of land barely five kilometres wide, and there is one way in: across the Ameghino isthmus, 77 kilometres from Puerto Madryn, where the interpretation centre and the entrance gate are.
From there the roads are gravel and the distances are real. Puerto Pirámides, the only village on the peninsula and the only place the whale boats leave from, is another 25 kilometres. Punta Norte, Caleta Valdés and Punta Delgada are strung around the far coast on unsealed roads. Done properly, the whole circuit is around 400 kilometres there and back and it takes a full day.
That is the single most common planning mistake here: people put the peninsula and Punta Tombo on the same day. They are in opposite directions and each one is a day of its own.
The single most useful table about this part of Patagonia. Nothing here is on show all year except the sea lions.
| Species | Season | Peak | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Southern right whale | June to mid-December | September – October | Golfo Nuevo, Puerto Pirámides, El Doradillo |
| Magellanic penguin | September to March or April | December – February | Punta Tombo |
| South American sea lion | All year round | — | Punta Loma, Punta Norte |
| Southern elephant seal | Females arrive early September to give birth | September – November | Punta Delgada, Caleta Valdés |
| Orca — the stranding season | February to May | March – April | Punta Norte, hunting sea lion pups |
| Orca — the second season | October and November | — | Caleta Valdés, hunting elephant seal pups |
| Commerson’s dolphin | Best in the warm months | — | Playa Unión, off the river mouth |
Everything else is south along Route 3. Trelew at about 65 kilometres has the palaeontology museum; Gaiman, 17 further on, is the Welsh valley, with chapels, Welsh still spoken by some and the tea houses that everyone stops at.
Past Trelew towards the coast are Rawson and Playa Unión, where the river meets the sea and the Commerson’s dolphins are — small black and white dolphins that ride the bow wave and are nothing like the ones people expect.
And Punta Tombo, at 170 kilometres, is the big one: the largest Magellanic penguin colony on the continent, where the birds nest in burrows either side of a path and walk across it whenever they feel like it.
All by road. Much of the peninsula is gravel, which is why the circuit takes a whole day rather than the three hours the map suggests.
| Place | Distance | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Punta Loma | 17 km | The sea lion colony, on a gravel road southeast of town. |
| El Doradillo | About 17 km | The beach north of town where whales come close enough to watch from the sand. |
| Península Valdés entrance | 77 km | The isthmus, with the interpretation centre. Where the peninsula begins. |
| Puerto Pirámides | 100 km | The only village on the peninsula, and the only port the whale boats leave from. 25 km past the isthmus. |
| Punta Norte | On the circuit | The far tip. Sea lion colony, and the orcas that strand themselves to hunt. |
| Caleta Valdés | On the circuit | A long gravel spit. Elephant seals, and the second orca season. |
| Punta Delgada | On the circuit | The southeastern corner, with cliffs and an elephant seal colony below them. |
| Isla de los Pájaros | Near the isthmus | A bird island seen from a shore hide. Landing is not allowed. |
| The full peninsula circuit | About 400 km | There and back from Puerto Madryn. It is a long day, and most of it is gravel. |
| Trelew | About 65 km | South on Route 3. The palaeontology museum is here. |
| Gaiman | About 81 km | The Welsh valley, 17 km past Trelew. Chapels, and the tea houses. |
| Rawson & Playa Unión | 20 km past Trelew | The river mouth where the Commerson’s dolphins are. |
| Punta Tombo | 170 km | The Magellanic penguin colony. A separate day from the peninsula. |
Two places on this map give you animals without getting on anything. Punta Loma, 17 kilometres from town on gravel, has a sea lion colony below a cliff viewpoint, and it is there every month of the year — the one thing here that has no season.
And El Doradillo, the beach just north of town, is where the whales come close enough to the shore to be watched from the sand. It costs nothing and, in the right weeks, it beats the boat. Both are worth knowing about for the day the wind gets up and the navigations are cancelled, which happens more than the brochures suggest.
The first thing a map flattens is the wind. Puerto Madryn is on an exposed gulf and the wind here decides whether the boats sail. It is not a rare event and it does not care about your itinerary, which is the real argument for a spare day rather than a tight one.
The second is that gravel is slower than it looks. Most of the peninsula’s roads are unsealed, and a distance that reads like an hour takes two. Nobody regrets the peninsula; plenty of people regret trying to fit it around a flight.
And the third is that none of this is a zoo. The calendar tells you when the animals are in the area, not that you will see them on Tuesday. The orcas at Punta Norte are the clearest case: people wait days for something that lasts twenty seconds. What we can do is put you there in the right weeks, at the right time of day, with somebody who knows the tide — and be honest with you about the rest.
Free written quotation within 24 hours. Send us your dates and we will tell you honestly which animals are there then, whether the peninsula and Punta Tombo both fit, and when the answer is that you should come in a different month.
The map answers where and when. These answer how.
Whales, penguins and the peninsula, with flights, hotels and transfers arranged.
See the packagesFlying down for the whale season, which is what most travellers on a schedule do.
See the itineraryThe overland version, for travellers who prefer the road to the airport.
See the itinerary
