Wild Shores of Patagonia: The Valdes Peninsula and Punta Tombo

I purchased for my father, who's going on a cruise around Cape Horn from Chile to Argentina. He gave it a big thumbs up. Excellent value!

In most coffee table books about wildlife, the text serves a minor role compared to the photographs. Reading this book, I was delighted to find that Jasmine Rossi, a talented amateur with no previous books to her credit, actually wrote a fascinating set of portraits of the birds and mammals of the Valdes Peninsula and Punta del Tombo in the State of Chubut, Argentina. As this area is now one of the major eco-tourist destinations in all of Latin America, this book was badly needed. Graham Harris's A GUIDE TO THE BIRDS AND MAMMALS OF COASTAL PATAGONIA is hard to find and is considerably more dry. Although she skimps a bit on the bird life, Rossi wrote a wonderful chapter on the Magellanic Penguins which obviously owed a lot to close observation. Particularly affecting was the story of a penguin couple whom she names José and Maria who hatch two eggs. The chick born first grows more quickly and has better access to food, forcing his younger and smaller sibling to attempt to steal food from an adjoining couple, at which point the interloper is pecked to death by the offended mother. Other particularly detailed chapters deal with the whales, sea lions, elephant seals, and orcas that make the peninsula their home. Also of interest is the last chapter, in which the author describes her experiences in the writing of this book. This book provides not only a superb set of photographs of Patagonian wildlife, but vignettes on their behavior, breeding habits, enemies, and the toll, if any, that human tourism takes on the species. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is even remotely interested in the subject.

Patagonia. The name always meant mystery andromance to me: a remote, little-peopled areasouth of civilization, beyond the reaches ofnormal travel routes; a place where naturestill exists without statues and monumentsand histories of kings and great empires.After reading Jasmine Rossi's picture book ofthe area, the mystery of Patagonia has beenrevealed, but the romance continues. My eyesenjoyed a feast of nature as I made my waythrough the book. I had difficulty readingthis straight through because I kept wantingto shower my mind with the beauty and sheerrawness of the photographs, and I keptflipping through to discover what elseMs. Rossi was witness to in the wild.As hard as it was, I did read through thebook sequentially, and I appreciated howwell-organized the book turned out tobe. Each major creature had its own section,starting with the peaceful, friendly southernright whale, then the awesome and terribleorca, then the seals and dolphins, penguinsand flight birds, and small land animals.After each section I could close my eyes andstill see and understand these marvelousanimals. I could do this because Ms. Rossiincluded not only understandable descriptionsbut also descriptions of how she felt, forexample, when she first encountered a rightwhale in the water, or when she tried tophotograph dusky dolphins.Animals of the sea have always fascinated me,but Ms. Rossi took me on a land trip andshowed me many other curious animals, somefamiliar, like the skunk, but otherscompletely unknown until this book, likeDarwin's Rhea.My favorite tidbit about the book is thatJasmine Rossi is not a professional marinebiologist who spent years among her objectsof study; she was simply an observer with acamera and notebook. Who says that greatdiscoveries are of the past of Magellan andDarwin?I may not ever get to visit Patagonia, butwhen I'm sipping a hot drink on a cold winterday, I can pull out the book, look at thepictures, and take a trip to a land far awaydown under.

Really nice. Wonderfull picture, interesting information mixed with personal experiencies from the author