whales, penguins, and hostel friends

we went whale watching in a small town called puerto piramides, on the peninsula valdez... this peninsula is a UNESCO protected sight and is a great place to see all kinds of animals, including penguins, elephant seals, right whales, sea lions, ostriches, llamas, jack rabbits, and even orca whales.  december through april orca whales beach themselves at punt norte in an attempt to feed on elephant seals.  sadly, we did not see any orcas, but they do come...apparently punta norte is one of 2 places in the world (the other being madagascar) where orca whales come to beach themselves)
on the boat with a whale coming quite close... there were even points when the whales went underneath our boat to come through the other sides...the sounds they made were quite haunting (in a good way)...

next to a penguin at punta tombo, which is a place on the peninsula valdez, where penguins are protected.  you can get right next to the penguins, which is so cool...the penguins are waiting for eggs to hatch so we saw a lot of them laying on their eggs...any day now the eggs will hatch...we missed seeing the baby penguins by days...

here are 2 super cute (and a bit chunky) penguins laying down, protecting their eggs...watching them waddle was so cute...it is crazy how trusting they are... but i guess that is what happens when animals are so protected... they become quite socialized...

a penguin strutting his stuff...

one of the great things about traveling and staying at dumpy hostels is all the cool people you get to meet... we met these 2 guys, kareem and ryan, from canada in el calafate.  they are the male versions of annette and me.  ryan is a riot... he has an obscene amount of energy and absolutely no inhibitions...he can talk to anyone about anything, even though he does not speak a word of spanish... he was the energy (annette) part of the duo.  then there was kareem, who was a bit more subdued, but funny as well... he loved to laugh at all of ryan's antics... his mellow, yet fun-loving, nature reminded me more of myself... they were quite fun to hang out with...

here is canadian ryan again... probably the funniest guy that i have ever met and definitely my favorite person that i have met on this trip... we got to spend more time with him, because his pal kareem went to antarctica  (wow!), but ryan took the 20 hour bus ride with us to puerto madryn where he explored the peninsula with us (we rented a car for 2 days, so we had a bit more freedom than being on a structured tour)...i laughed almost the entire time...when we weren't laughing we were playing name that tune, of which he is the champion... this was definitely the height of my hostel friends experience... sometimes you meet people that you can hang out with for a night, but you never think about again... but other times you meet someone who is just so great, that you know you will see them again... and he is definitely one of those guys...yay!!!