Marine Wolves – First Dive!

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
― Anaïs Nin

Okay, I think Lobos Marinos (as they call them here), or Marine Wolves is a much better name than Sea Lions.  This was the kids first official dive as certified scuba divers.  But getting there wasn’t a piece of cake.  Having these animal encounters with the penguins and the sea lions was a priority for us all, so we made it happen.   Argentina is a huge country and the distances are vast.  In our research we had hard choices for which towns to hit- and it seemed like whenever we thought we’ll let’s hop over here, it is the next closest destination, we would look up the distance and an 18 hour bus ride always seemed to be the distance.  So on this  tour of Argentina we ended up with 4 long hauls, we did two by flight and two by bus.   We left El Calafate by bus to Rio Gallegos – the furthest south we will be on this trek, at a latitude further south than Africa, New Zealand or Australia that isn’t too surprising.  A bit further south is where other travellers were launching for trips to Antarctica.  We didn’t stay there too long though, we caught another bus onward to Trelew.  This was our first overnight bus experience and it was pretty nice.  We panicked around 9:30 when half the bus was asleep and there was no indication of dinner coming.  But the attendant assured us there was and we continued to panic that I misunderstood the Spanish until 10:30 when it was finally served as the sun was setting.  A fairly typical dinner time here, but we were still losing faith that it was really happening.  It came with a plate of cold cuts and a hot tray of breaded chicken fillet and mashed potatoes.  Then we tucked into our reclining seats with our blankets and sleep masks for the night.

This got us to the town of Trelew.  Trelew was selected for its wonderful Dinosaur Museum since Patagonia has yielded a mother load of dinosaur finds and the largest dinosaur specimen yet discovered.  What 10 year old doesn’t love that?!  (It probably deserves its own post but I will let this article do the talking if you are interested.  I have also included a few pics.)  Trelew is also close (in Patagonian terms) to a massive Penguin rookery at Punta Tombo that Shia wrote about.  We spent two days there and just another hour away we arrived at Puerto Madryn for the scuba dive with Marine Wolves.  This area surely deserved more of our time but tough choices had to be made on this trip.  If we had come a month or two earlier Puerto Madryn is a hotbed for whale watching.  An area worth a bucket list for any wildlife lovers out there!

So, that brings us to our dive.  The day before the dive Liam was a little nervous and Shia was just anxious to meet them!  Snorkeling in the open ocean has freaked Liam out but he says diving was less scary to be down in the water when you can see what is around you rather than on the surface blinded by the depth below.   We took a boat 30 minutes through the wind and waves to the nature preserve for the sea lions.  We were the first boat to arrive and went down to about 20 feet and pretty much just hung out at the bottom and watched the show.  It was a bit of a wait before they came to play.  The visibility was about 15 feet and they are fast, so the first “fly by” of a sea lion was quite a surprise!  Quickly one darted to look at me and dashed away.  Which we all agreed left us hoping “Please, let there be more!  That was awesome!”

After a while they seemed to come out in droves.  We spent 45 minutes under the water playing with them.  Actually, letting them play with us.  That is the best part: visiting their world, the wild, where they choose to come to us and to touch us because they want to.  It is amazing to see their world through their eyes.  They are so curious about us and would zoom up to us and really make eye contact and check us out.  The girls are very playful, and like puppies, they like to check things out using their mouth so they nibbled on our hands, our gear, anything.  At 6 ft long and 300 lbs, it was quite intimidating to see an open jaw coming at you, but they had a gentle nibble of curiosity.  As we were leaving we then saw a bull sea lion appear.  Holy smokes, after watching the ladies all dance around us for 45 minutes seeing an animal twice their weight and 8 ft long appear took my breath away.  Liam even stroked him as he swam by.  He wasn’t playful like the ladies, but watched us intently as we swam along back to the boat.  The joy and excitement on the kids’ faces after this experience was awesome.  We all loved it!

Can I get some air?

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What is this thing? There's only one way to find out! (Shia reports this was a popular occurrence behind my head as well!)

Here’s a couple short video links to see their graceful dance and playful antics (Shia has the pink snorkel):