Valdes Peninsula

10th October 2025

As seems to be our way, we woke up very early and went for an early morning beach walk. There were two Southern Right Whales very close to the shore in the bay and we stopped and watched them for a while whilst reminding ourselves to bring Tim‘s binoculars tomorrow, if they would still be there.

Today we are heading into the Peninsula to Punta Delgada, which is one of the marine hotspots to see elephant seals and orcas it is approximately 85 km on the Ripeo Road surface..

Because we had our apartment, we didn't need to ride today with all of our gear, so we selected some items to take which for me was my camera drone and other equipment in one bag and my money passport et cetera in my rucksack. I strapped both of these to the rear of the bike along with a couple of sandwiches that Tim and I had bought for lunch.

The first 30 or 40 km of Ripeo were smooth and flat and then returned towards the west and headed towards the beaches. The road became heavily corrugated and sandy and ratty and quite difficult to ride. We pressed on and made fairly good speed. As soon as we arrived, we jumped off our bikes expecting to go to look at the elephant seals, except that I turned around looked at the rear of my bike and found that both my drone, camera, Rucksack and my money and passport were no longer there. This necessitated a mild panic and jumping back on the bike both Tim and I road at excessive speed all the way back to the main gates not even worrying about the severe surface and bumps that we had just encountered.

It’s amazing when you’re in sets in and you are panicking about your whole trip how easy the writing becomes and we made extremely fast pace back to the main gates.

Find the Bag

Tim arrived before me so when I got there he was able to tell me that my bag had been found and was in the hands of someone called Ana who was going whale watching and we could meat them in town in a couple of hours. The feeling of relief was incredible. The passport would have ended the trip right there and the loss of money would have severely curtailed any possibility of doing more things. Tim thanked me for making every day an adventure.

I made the meeting with Ana and she gave me back everything in the bag. I donated a soft toy penguin to her daughter and we were back in action. By action, I mean we went back to the same bar as yesterday and had a couple of beers. Tim left early to get some high quality TV in, and I stayed for a last one with a new found friend.