Whales and Wales in Patagonia

We arrived in Puerto Madryn after a 14 hour overnight bus ride from Mar Del Plata. This was a good thing, as it was supposed to take 16 hours! What was less good was the on-board service - dinner consisted of a cold hamburger, with oodles of the obligatory luminous orange fizz. After 5 minutes of fizz Hannah was grinning like a maniac. (This isn't quite true, although I certainly felt... 'odd' - Hannah).

We decided to walk up along the coast road to the 'eco centro' - both of our guide books promising that it would be open, albeit at different times. The '40 minute or 3km walk' took more than an hour, battling against the combined forces of heat and wind. This area, and Patagonia generally, is breezy to say the very least! When we got to the 'centro it was closed, but at least it hadn't been turned into a school (yet). Oh well, we´ll return another day.... we slogged it back into town and slept a very sound night at the hostel - on bunk beds. (yippee! - Hannah)

The next day we hired a car for three days and took off for Peninsula Valdes, famed for its amazing wildlife spotting opportunities, due mainly to lack of human settlement. The one village, Puerto Piramide, is little more than a few restaurants and a big campsite, set behind sand dunes right behind the beach of a beautiful bay. It took 100km of driving just to get here from Puerto Madryn, without passing any other settlements... we were starting to get an idea of the vastness of the Patagonian steppe. After setting up camp we set off again to do a loop of the peninsula - a drive of about 240km and our first experience of 'ripío' roads (basically gravel). Instructions for driving on this type of road include 'no sudden braking' and 'no overtaking' - rules which the locals happily ignore... resulting in two cars rolling over a week apparently. Luckily, as it was New Year's Eve, most folk were already at their destinations and the roads were pretty quiet. Glad we didn't break down though, as it really is desolate, until you catch the fantastic views of the ocean.

In terms of wildlife we had the works and saw:

Eagles
Turkey Vultures
Rheas (like ostrich)
Lesser Rheas
Guanacos (wild llama)
Horses
Cows
Sheep
Sea Lions and their pups
Elephant Seals
Cormorants and other sea birds
Hares
Cavy

but the stars of the show were the Magellanic Penguins, with their fluffy young.

We didn't see any whales though, which is what this area makes it's living from most of the year. (Tourism, not harpooning)

On New Year's Day we drove to Trelew, which was basically closed. A ghost town. Reading the local papers the next day it transpired that practically the entire Rio Chubut valley had decamped to the beach resort of Playa Union for the day. Despondent and hungry, we pressed on to Gaiman, which is pretty much ground zero for the Welsh-speaking community in Argentina. Here we found one of the (many) "traditional" welsh tea houses where we asked for tea for two and got served the most enormous tray of cakes you have ever seen. (In fact we counted that we had eaten 7 different slices of cake or pie, plus 2 scones each and some homemade bread and jam. I really did feel odd this time, infact the sugar rush turned me into a giggling wreck for about 20 minutes. So much so that we had to ask for another pot of tea, just to recover! Hannah)

While we still had the car we also visited something called "Geoparque Bryn Gwyn" (white hill in Welsh) where a fantastic number of fossils are practically falling out of some cliffs. Despite being well inland, and well above the river valley, huge fossilised oyster beds could be seen almost at the top of the cliff, dating to when sea levels were much higher. At lower levels and in different geological strata the fossils of extinct mammals, and even dolphins, penguins and seals had been found. The walk through the geoparque is described in the 'good book' as a walk through the badlands, an apt description as we felt like we were in the middle of a desert. Which we were, really.



All this put us in the mood for some serious sustenance and back at the pretty campsite near Trelew where we had set ourselves up, we partook of the national pastime and successfully barbecued four amazing steaks and two chorizo sausages, washed down with some very nice Argentine Syrah wine. All for a few quid at the supermarket. How very Argentine...



Robin (and Hannah)