One criticism that you often read about Valdés is, that you can’t get really close to the animals. And it’s somewhat true. Beach access is very restricted. There are only a few points throughout the peninsula where you are allowed to go down to the beach like in Puerto Piramides. The viewpoints, although perfectly built and maintained, are often 100 m or more away from the sea. But there is one way around these restrictions, albeit not a cheap one.
Some of the land on the peninsula is still privately owned, like the Estancia San Lorenzo in post #17. On this private land, you often have more options and fewer restrictions. Close to Caleta Valdés, you can find the Estancia La Elvira.
It’s a nice farm that offers accommodation for a handful of guests. Sadly it’s not cheap. A room for three costs about 300€ per night including breakfast and dinner. Despite that it was way above our average daily budget we decided to stay there for three nights. I will soon explain why. The rooms are small but comfortable and the food was good. The people at La Elvira were all very friendly and gave great tips about the location and interesting explanations about the local wildlife. In the evenings we often relaxed playing pool at the Estancia.
If you stay on this farm you have two big advantages: First, you can be at one of the most interesting places on the peninsula, the Caleta Valdés, in the early morning or late evening without having to drive in darkness (which is not recommended due to the gravel roads and many animals). La Elvira is just a few minutes away from the Caleta viewpoint. Second, and more importantly, if you stay at the Estancia you have access to a private beach.
On this beach, you can find a large colony of elephant seals. On the first visit to this beach, we were accompanied by a guide and a couple of rules were explained to us (like always keeping a low profile and never ever getting between an elephant seal and the sea). On the following visits, we were completely on our own. Since no other tourists were allowed on this beach and you could get really close to the animals the wildlife experience was very different from the other viewpoint on Valdés.
Often we were just a few meters away from these huge and fascinating animals.
Since we spent many hours on all three days at this beach we were able to observe some very interesting behaviors of the elephant seals.
We have often seen that they were shuffling stones on their body. We don’t know whether this is because they can’t scratch their bodies with their fins or they want to regulate their body temperature or they do this for some other reason. If somebody knows it, please post it in the comments.
Although most female seals had already left the colony there were still a couple of them breastfeeding their pups.
Since there were very few females left, the males often fight about the remaining ones. The typical procedure is, that a male approaches from the sea and challenges the one next to the female.
Normally they don’t really attack each other. After many threatening gestures from both sides, one of them accepts the defeat and retreats.
Then the female decides whether she likes the male or not.
On one occasion we were even able to watch a fascinating mating scene of elephant seals from an extremely close distance. If you don’t like to watch elephant seal porn please skip the remaining part of this blog post. It will get very explicit.
Isn’t it cute how tender they are to each other and how they relax together afterwards?
Just a few minutes later we found ourselves very close to the next mating scene. We definitely hadn’t expected this.
That’s it from Valdés. Altogether we spent two full weeks on the peninsula. Far more than we had originally planned. But we loved this place. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far.
Wild Places 
Die Estancia La Elvira scheint mir trotz des hohen Preises ein supertoller Tip für Naturliebhaber zu sein, vielen Dank! Weißt du, ob es sich ein Aufenthalt auch im Februar oder Anfang März lohnen würde, oder sind die elephant seals dann nicht da?
Für uns war das besondere an La Elvira der Privatstrand mit den Seeelefanten verbunden mit der Nähe zu den Orcas. Wenn Orcas gesichtet wurden, war das in der Regel auch auf der Estancia bekannt und man konnte mal schnell vorbeifahren. Im März sind die Orcas aber im Norden zu finden und nicht mehr an der Caleta Valdes. Bei den Seeelefanten sind zumindest auch die Weibchen weg. Damit fallen dann auch die super spannenden Paarungsszenen sowie die Kämpfe der Bullen um die Weibchen weg. Ich würde im März eher versuchen mir eine Unterkunft möglichst nahe an der Punta Norte zu suchen. Die Estancia San Lorenzo bietet z.B. auch einige wenige Zimmer an. Das macht dann mehr Sinn. Einen weiteren Tipp schreibe ich Dir gleich noch zu Deiner Frage bei Part II.
Super, dann könnten wir ja im März in der Estancia San Lorenzo wohnen! Ich kann mir allerdings nicht vorstellen, daß man es dort genauso gut antrifft wie ihr auf der Estancia La Elvira, das war ja wirklich ein ganz außergewöhnlicher Aufenthalt!
Der wesentliche Nachteil der Estancia San Lorenzo ist, das tagsüber Horden von Touristen mit Tourbussen dort einfallen während man auf La Elvira praktisch den ganzen Tag die Estancia für sich hat. Ab dem späteren Nachmittag sind aber auch aus San Lorenzo alle Touristen weg.
Wir hatten ja die letzte Tour des Tages gebucht und waren dann komplett alleine auf der Estancia.
Tolle Bilder! Hab noch nie solche Paarungsszenen gesehen, beeindruckend…
Danke! Hat uns auch sehr beeindruckt.