Puerto Pirámides is the only village on Península Valdés, and it exists largely because of whales. It is a small, sandy place of a few hundred people strung along a bay of pale cliffs, and between roughly June and December southern right whales come into the sheltered waters of the Golfo Nuevo to calve. The boat trips that go out to them leave from here.
The whale-watching is regulated and the operators are licensed; boats are launched from the beach by tractor, and the whales in season are often close enough to see without binoculars. Outside the season the village is quiet, and the attraction shifts to the rest of the peninsula: the elephant seal and sea lion colonies on the outer coast, and, at Punta Norte in March and April, orcas deliberately stranding themselves to snatch sea-lion pups from the beach.
Most visitors come on a day trip from Puerto Madryn, a hundred kilometres away. Staying the night in Pirámides is the better choice in whale season: you get the bay at dawn and dusk, and can see whales from the shore without a boat at all.
The peninsula is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and distances on it are long and on gravel. Fill up with fuel before leaving the village.