Estancia San Lorenzo: Home to the Largest Penguin Colony

The Estancia San Lorenzo Nature Reserve is located within the Peninsula Valdés Protected Natural Area 160 kilometers from the city of Puerto Madryn, in the province of Chubut, Patagonia, Argentina.

On its coasts there is a colony of more than 600,000 Magellan penguins that can be visited between September 7 and March 31 of each year, making it the largest continental colony in the world.

In addition to having the possibility of observing these wonderful animals in their natural habitat, in the area we can find marine fossils that float on the cliffs and canyons that drain into the sea.

Thanks to the diversity of attractions, you can choose to travel different paths that vary according to the area to visit and its difficulty.

Puerto Madryn - Pinguinera and Estancia San Lorenzo

The trails and activities to choose from are: 

- Classic tour: The trail runs through a sector of nesting and permanent transit of penguins. In its middle part it presents a coastal front from which you can see the immensity of the San Matías Gulf and the beach that the penguins use to enter and exit the water, also to rest. At the end of the tour you will find the ruins of the old sea lion oil factory. The duration of the tour is 1.30 hrs. 

- Land of penguins: This tour is a mini trekking through the area of greatest concentration of animals, a sector only used by Researchers and Park Rangers and accessed in small groups and in the company of a ranger from Estancia San Lorenzo. The sector of "The Hive" is visited, named for the high density of nests that gather in this place and the Cañon Pingüinera, an obligatory passage of penguins that must pass through it to access different nesting sectors. One of the most beautiful sectors is the cliff area, which has also been occupied by penguins to make their nests. During the return we travel through the high area of the coast to return to the starting point.