Whale watching tours in Argentina

Environment

As a locally owned Argentine business, we strive to operate all of our tours in a responsible manner. We work with local tour operators, tour guides and properties to ensure that they understand the importance of protecting the environment as it is a finite resource that, if managed properly, can provide economic benefit to the local community.

We follow all local environmental laws and legislation, and work with local partners that minimally impact the natural surroundings to ensure that we protect the national parks and destinations that we visit for future generations.

National Park entrance fees are paid directly to the national parks by the clients to ensure that they directly support the parks´ maintenance and preservation.

As the Peninsula Valdes whale watching tour visits a protected wilderness site, we work with the best local boat crew to ensure that the environmental impact is minimized. During the trip, our crew aims to educate visitors about the local environment, the whales´ long journeys and how man has impacted their habitat. At the core of this effort is the desire that our clients enjoy the whale watching experience, learn about the local environment and efforts to protect, as well as to minimize our impact on the beautiful lands that we visit.

We are working to keep our operations green and are utilizing web/e-communication to reduce paper consumption. We have taken the decision to no longer produce 75 page printed brochures and focus on web/e-communications. We utilize low energy lightbulbs in our offices, recycle paper/glass and try to minimize our water consumption. We also reduce our plastic bottle waste by providing refillable large water coolers. Additionally, we are constantly assessing our operations to see how we may partner with and support local communities, NGOs, wilderness areas, regional and national parks that we visit.

We are also looking into how we might implement a voluntary carbon-offset program for our clients.

Community

As an Argentine owned travel business, we understand the importance of supporting our local partners during both the good times and the bad times. By partnering with locally owned hotels, activity providers, guides, restaurants and properties over the years, we not only ensure a high level of quality and that our clients' needs are satisfied, but we also develop long term relationships with local business owners and help them plan and prepare for the busy and slow times of the year. And this also helps our clients to better experience the local culture.

We hire local guides and pay them a solid wage (which is generally higher than the local average). We also train our guides and cover the associated costs with the training program.

We prefer small, family run operations to ensure that we help sustain the community economy, and actively seek them out rather than using international chains.

We donate each month to the Argentine not-for-profit organization, “Por los Chicos” and our support benefits poor and vulnerable street children in Argentina.

In addition, we also share our ethos of cultural and environmental respect with our local partners. Be it a small hotel, mountain lodge, kayak or hiking guide/outfitter, we ensure that they work their best to incorporate environmental and culturally sensitive best practice in their operations, so as to benefit the diverse communities in which we operate.

On this trip in particular, we work closely with the Valdes Peninsula community and in our pre-departure materials (and on tour) we recommend local cafes, restaurants and shops to ensure that our clients support the local businesses.

We also work closely with our local, family owned partners to ensure that we visit these pristine environments and are able to responsibly observe the marine life of the Valdes Peninsula, Patagonia.