Monte León 4x4: Lobos y Pingüinos

The 4x4 excursion Monte León: Lobos y Pingüinos offers a unique opportunity to explore from El Calafate this national park that combines the sea, coast and steppe with a landscape full of Patagonian fauna. You can walk among penguin nests by trekking to a viewpoint from where you can see the cliffs of the first national park with marine coast, visit the famous León Head and walk along the beach with its natural caves formed by sea erosion.

The tour starts by picking you up from your hotel in El Calafate at 6:30 a.m. to go to the Monte León National Park. Crossing the Patagonian steppe from west to east will pass through the Provincial Route 9 of gravel that runs along the Santa Cruz River and where you can enjoy magnificent views of its valley while finding native animals of Patagonia as guanacos, foxes, choiques and even, on some occasions, cougars. They will stop at panoramic points and you can go up to the viewpoint that our vehicle Overland 4x4 has to contemplate the spectacular views that offers this valley.

Around 11:30 a.m. will enter Monte León heading towards the sea coast and where the protagonists of the excursion are: the magellanic penguins.

Very close to the coast they will do a 1.5 hour trekking of low difficulty by the path of the penguin house in which they can walk among penguins and their nests and observe all the colony from its viewpoint. Monte León has one of the most important colonies of this species in Argentina.

The 4x4 tour continues to the Lobería and Cabeza de León trail where you can reach the edge of this imposing cliff that resembles a lion and gives name to the national park. Here you can see stagebacks of one-haired sea lions and, occasionally on the coast, cetaceans such as the right whale, southern dolphin or the white-tailed tonina overa.