THE PLACE CASTELLANO

On the beach, the sea moistens the environment and the sound travels in the air. Energetic tides piling up against the coast to form cliffs and caves blend into the magnificent scenery. The beach houses a colony of elephant seals. Valdés Peninsula is the only continental post of elephant seals in the world. Characterised by its large size, the male’s trunk,
and the female’s deep and tender look, this magnificent species makes the land a passionate place.

  
SERVICES
     
 

THE PLACE
SERVICES
ACTIVITIES
WILDLIFE

THE HOTEL
Originally, the place was Correo Argentino’s main office and the Argentine Navy’s casino. Today, it is an exclusive romantic hotel, where you can enjoy all the comfort in a naturally wild environment.The hotel boasts 27 warmly
decorated rooms, a pub, a restaurant and a boutique. From the moment you wake up until you go to bed, the hotel plays an undisputed role on a holiday in which absolutely everything is connected to pleasure and nature harmony.

Restaurant
With its tones of ochre and white, creating an intimate and cosy atmosphere, the all-wood restaurant offers meals along with an efficiently discrete service, home-made dishes and exquisite flavours to indulge all palates. The restaurant’s main dish is Patagonic lamb served with various accompaniments captivating restaurant guests with the typical Argentine flavour. For wine lovers, a good variety of white and red wines cheers their hearts and warms their souls.
The restaurant also delights guests with other exquisite delicacies - some original, some traditional, but all home-made.

The Pub
The LIGHTHOUSE pub. It is a special place to share the day’s experiences and program the activities of the following day. It offers a cosy and modest atmosphere where you can find several pieces of our history, such as different elements of the National Navy, objects of the Peninsula’s country life, and piles of Puerto Madryn’s antique port spanning over one hundred years of history. Also you can play pool, cards, darts as well as various table games.

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ACTIVITIES

The hotel offers a wide variety of activities so that you can fully enjoy your stay in the Peninsula, connect with nature and marvel at the Patagonic views.

TREKKING
Interpretative walks along the coast with specialised guides to observe elephant seals. You walk along paths that enable you to see the animals, bearing in mind how important it is not to disturb them. On the beach you can sit to observe this
magnificent species, accompanied by the murmur of the sea and the dark green of the sandbars.

HORSE RIDING
Horse riding along the cliffs sets your pulse running, plunges you into an earth and sea journey, making you feel you are an active participant in preserving the environment. From the cliffs, you can see two completely different landscapes where life takes many forms. You can also hear the wind blow inwardly, see the birds flying passionately, feel the earth vibrating roughly as night begins to fall, while you desperately try to keep those brief moments that will soon begin to disappear.

SCUBA-DIVING
You will go to Puerto Pirámides, where you can take excursions to different natural marine parks. At Golfo Nuevo, the water is transparent and the natural conditions are excellent. Scuba-diving amateurs from all over the world are delighted to see a varied marine fauna and flora. Thanks to a rocky shore and easy accessibility to the right spots, this is a great place to enjoy scuba diving.

WILDLIFE

SOUTHERN ELEPHANT SEALS:
Males can reach 5 meters in length and weigh 3,500 kg while females can reach 3 meters in length and weigh 900 kg. Elephant seals are the largest of all seals. They use their trunks to fight for females. Every year, they arrive to the Valdés Peninsula in two different occasions. In spring, they come to mate and give birth and, in summer, they return to moult their skin.

They are extremely polygynous. Males compete for females and subordinate them to form harems.

They give birth to one pup per year after being pregnant for over 11 months. The mothers nurse their pups for less than
a month. While on the coast, they do not eat, and rest most of the time, so as to save energy and be able to return to the feeding area without any problem.

They feed on squid, but their diet also includes fish.

They migrate 400 km heading to the continental slope to forage for food. They are amazing divers. They can stay at depths of 1,200 meters for over 100 minutes. As they dive, they exhale the air from their lungs.
The bloodstream carries oxygen through the haemoglobin and the muscles carry oxygen through the mioglobin.

SOUTHERN RIGHT WHALE:
These mammals are part of the cetacean family. They may have a life expectancy of over 60 years. They measure up to 16 meters long and weigh up to 50 tons. Females are slightly bigger than males. Every year, they arrive to Valdés Peninsula in June and stay until December. They come to mate, give birth and breed calves.

This species can give birth every 2 or 3 years. Once the 1-year gestation and 1-year lactation periods finish, fertile females are ready to mate again. It is believed that some 50 calves are born per year in Valdés. As the nursing milk contains a lot of fat, calves’ weight increases very fast. Thanks to the callosities found on top and side of their head, they can be followed for long periods. As each pattern of callosities is different for each whale, animals visiting the Peninsula every year can be easily photo-identified.

Their wide short pectoral flippers are another distinctive feature, though they have no dorsal fin. Females give birth for the first time whey they are 7 or 9 years old. The new-born is 5.5 meters long.

Due to their proximity to shore, slow movement, and high fat content, they were the first to be commercially exploited as well as highly pursued by whalers. After mating they migrate long distances to places where they can find a good number of plankton-copepods and Krill.

MAGELLAN PENGUINS:
Magellan Penguins are the only birds that can swim, but not fly. They are around 45 cm long. They are amphibious that need to come on land to incubate their eggs, care for the young and moult and grow their adult feathers.

They are naturally loyal and every year they return to their colony searching for the same nest and the same partner. Males are the first to arrive by the end of August or beginning of September. They spend a lot of time digging and preparing their burrows. At this stage, they often fight over territory.

They dig burrows into sandy grounds or under bushes creating penguin colonies with several hundred thousand nests. In October, females lay, generally, two eggs. The parents share in the responsibility of caring for the eggs and the young during forty days.

In November, the first young penguins are born. As baby chicks are constantly hungry, parents are always getting into the sea to forage for food. The baby penguins depend absolutely on their parent during the first two months. Eventually, they moult and grow their adult feathers heading for the high seas by themselves. As parents lose a lot of weight, they leave their colonies to forage for food, and then return to begin their annual moulting. During the moulting process, they do not go into the sea.

Between the end of March and the middle of April, they finish these processes and are ready to migrate towards Brazil following anchovies and leaving deserts, nest, and beaches behind.

KILLER WHALES (ORCA):
are the largest species of dolphins. The male averages 9 meters long and weighs 8 tons, while the female measures 6 meters long and weighs 6 tons. The dorsal fin of the male is more upright than that of the female, which is slightly curved back. Orcas live in steady social pods, generally led by adult females. Each member has a role.

Free orcas have a life expectancy of 50 to 80 years, both males and females, but, when held in captivity, they just live 5 or 10 years, which is alarming and extremely sad.

They are territorial, that is, they live in a specific area. The dorsal fin enables people to identify individuals, as their epidermal tissue does not regenerate and skin injuries remain. Like whales, individuals are easily photo-identified.

Orcas’ population grows very slowly because females become sexually mature when they are about 15 years old and they give birth to a single baby about every 5 to 10 years. The gestation period lasts 16 months and they care for the young for over a year. They are the ocean’s top predators, which means they have developed sophisticated feeding techniques depending on the prey they want to eat.

Patagonic orcas have developed a beached technique to capture elephant seals and sea lions. This is a very dangerous technique, as they have to beach themselves on the shoreline. The technique is passed on from generation to generation and calves are strictly trained by the pod’s lead.

DUSKY DOLPHIN:
Dusky dolphins are (toothed) odontocete cetaceans. They specially feed on anchovies, squid and small hakes. They generally live in groups. They are usually seen jumping up and escorting vessels. It is believed that the dolphin’s jumps are part of a complex communication system.

They use a very peculiar feeding strategy. In order to forage for food, they split up into small groups some distance (1.5 kilometres) apart. When one group finds a small schooling fish, the others head to the place sharing the food and making a circle around the fish on the surface. Females become sexually mature when they are about 6-7 years old. In summer, they give birth to a single calf every two or three year.

According to teeth studies, their lifespan is estimated at about 35 years.

COMMERSON’S DOLPHIN: The Commerson’s Dolphin, locally known as Tonina Overa, is endemic to the coasts of Patagonia. They can also be found in the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean. They average 1.5 meters long and weigh around 50 kg. Calves measure between 75 and 80 cm long and weigh about 6 kg. The young have a grey coloration that eventually becomes uniform.

Females give birth from November until the end of the summer. In these months, you can easily see females swimming with the young. Both males and females become sexually mature at 7 and 8 years. On their belly there is a black spot that is different according to the sex of the animal: drop-shaped in the males and horseshoe-shaped in the females. They often swim upside down so you can see the spot and know whether they are males or females.

They live near Valdés Península. In the city of Rawson, there are many ships that take you ashore for an excursion to watch these small dolphins.

ONE–HAIR SEA LIONS:
Males are about 2.3 meters long and weigh 300 kg., while adult females are 1.80 meters long and weigh 100 or 140 kg. The males’ neck is thicker than that of the females, and they also have longer hair. Like elephant seals, they organise in a harem structure during the mating season where the herd males keep constant vigil over their females to protect them from other males.

The mating season begins in December, when males arrive, and continues until February. At the end of December, females start to arrive. They come pregnant and give birth to a single pup, which is about 80 cm long and weighs around 12 kg. Females raise their pup for about a year. They usually eat at night. They prefer to stay on the coast during the day and enter into the sea at night. They feed on a variety of fish and squids.

Sea lions are good swimmers. They swim long distances. In the water, they are curious and confident but, on the earth, they are fearful.

GUANACO:
Patagonic guanacos are part of the camelidae family. They have a wonderful reddish fur made of very fine wool. They are herbivorous mammals and live in arid and semiarid areas. Adults are nearly 1.60 meters tall and their weight can range between 80 and 120 kg, and baby guanacos weigh between 8 and 15 kg.
The mating period goes from October to February and, after being pregnant for 11 months, females give birth to a single calf once a year. They nurse their calves for six to ten months.
Females become sexually mature when they are two to three years old, while males become sexually mature one year later. They have a life expectancy of 15 / 16 years. While the herb is feeding, the dominant male warns its herd with an alarm call in case of any danger.
They are territorial. Males compete to keep a territory with natural resources in order to attract females. A good territory offers food, water and protection from predators.
For Precolombian indigenous cultures, subsistence was based on the hunt of guanacos. Tehuelches used guanaco furs to produce blankets (quillangos), coats, and simple moccasins. They also used their tendons to produce threads and their bones to build various musical instruments.

LESSER RHEA (ñandú petizo, choique):
The lesser rhea (ñandú petizo, choique) is smaller than the Pampeano rhea. They inhabit the steppe in the south of Mendoza, Neuquén and Chubut.

Although they are flightless birds, they can reach 60 km per hour protecting them from other animals. grass and green shoots.

They form groups but, in case of danger, they spread out in an attempt to confuse the predator. Several females lay their eggs in the same nest, sometimes, even more than 30. It is surprising to see that males are the ones who incubate the eggs and care for the young until they can live on their own.

Foxes are the main egg and chick predators. Like guanacos, they were the first to inhabit Patagonia. They were part of Tehuelche’s diet.

MARA:
They are natives of arid grasslands of Patagonia. They are rodents and feed exclusively on vegetation. Although exceedingly shy, they have enhanced senses that help them notice predators at a distance. Pumas, foxes, wild cats, raptors are the main predators attacking their young. They are also called Patagonian hare due to their high travel speed.

These rodents have very unusual behaviour, especially for mammals. They are monogamous and the adult pairs intermittently nurse their young using a community system. They live into burrows in groups of 4 to 8.

GREY FOX:
Grey foxes live in the Patagonic steppe, especially in bush-like areas where they can blend into the landscape. They are cunning and patient hunters and they often hunt at night. They feed on insects, rodents, birds and sheep. Their tail is about 35 cm. They are 90 cm long.
They live in Argentine Patagonia and in the South of Chile.
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