"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans"

Puerto Madryn

At Puerto Madryn we did two major day tours. One was to The Península Valdés, which is a good spot to see whales, sea lions, penguins, elephant seals, guanacos (a member of the camel family, but much prettier), foxes, Armadillos, and a wide variety of birds. Unfortunately the killer whale was not quite in season so we did not see one :( . We started by seeing the Elephant seals and sealions, in two different places and a small penguin colony. It was very funny as the penguins did not seem to mind our precence, so you could get very close. Then it was time to go to Punto Piramide, the only town on Penínzula Valdés and take a 1 and a half hour boat trip. That was an amazing trip where we saw a total of 6 whales. It was the Atlantic Southern Right Whale and they all had a baby whale with them...if you can call a 4 meter long whale a baby!!. This whale species can reach up to 18 meters and weigh up to 100 tonnes so the ones we saw were huge!! And when we reached the shore and looked back, we saw one of them jump as if to say goodbye making a huge splash when it landed.
The next day we headed off to punta tombo . There is a very big colony of Magellanic Penguins. On the way there we stopped to take a take a boat trip out to the open sea to see the Commerson's dolphins, a black and white species that is found only in a few locations in the Southern hemisphere. We saw an abundance of those all around the boat and some even jumped for us even though that is not common for them.
The penguins were great. We were just strolled amongst them as they were nesting their young. A really amazing experience. One of them even nibbled at my shoe. At the most there can be around one million penguins there. At one point a herd of Guanacoes ran across the path just infront of us just to make our day even more spectacular. To finalise the day we went to a little town called Gaiman. It was founded in 1874 by the Welsh who had already founded the town Trelew nearby and started on their huge irrigation system around the river Chubut in the Chubut Valley. There we went for the famous welsh tea to make the experience complete. It was very nice but the funniest thing about it was how it resembled tea time at my Mums with tea, wide selection of cakes and bread with marmelade. Fortunately my Mum does not charge the same price! ;)
The next day we checked out, had lunch and relaxed until we had to take the bus that afternoon to Rio Gallegos even further south. It was a 17 hour trip, but by now we are getting used to long bus trips, so no big deal ;) . Rio Gallegos had only one purpose for us: Gateway to The Tierra Del Fuego and Ushuaia: the southern most town in the world.

Until then: take care :)


Next: At The End Of The World.

posted by Nonni @ 7:45 e.h.