Lower Chubut valley - Pto Madryn and Gaiman

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The bus arrived 5 hours early in Puerto Madryn, so two very sleepy people were slightly surprised and confused having being woken up and told to get off. After finally having woken up, and several very cheesy empanadas (small pasties) later, we walked out to the Ecocentro on the outskirts of town. Welcomed by the skeleton of a Right Whale outside we stepped into the perfect beach house - and a cool exhibition about the local area and why is is so important to a huge variety of sealife.

We spent the whole of the next day in a minibus. Well it felt like it. But we did manage a few stops on the tour of Peninsula Valdez, taking in sealions (lots of fighting, waddling, swimming, smelling), penguins (cuddling, sunbathing, climbing/walking huge distances on little legs), armadillos (snouting out grubs - oblivious to the crowds around), elephant seals (playing dead, occasionally grunting) and the bottoms of several guanacos (llamas) and choique (small ostriches).

The next day we got suited up in town, jumped into a little boat and bounced across the waves to Punta Loma, south of Pto Madryn. There we went diving with sealions - and it was amazing! Holly and I had to wait at the bottom for the other pair of divers to descend and despite knowing and hoping to see them, it was still a shock to see the first shadow race by within minutes. In the next 50 minutes we were constantly surrounded by sealions - shooting past, approaching slowly and inquisitively, staring directly into our eyes, nibbling hands, fingers, fins, tanks and trying to pull off our hoods. They frequently seemed to be streaking straight past, only to catch sight of us, stop, twist in half immediately as if to get a better view and drift slowly by, maintaining eye contact all the way! The water was cold and the visibility only a couple of meters, but the first we didn´t notice and the second just made the sealions come closer so they could see us better. An amazing experience.

We couldn´t really top that in Puerto Madryn, so moved on to the Welsh towns of Trelew (not terribly exciting!) and Gaiman (much more quirky). We went to the Parque Desafio in Gaiman, made by one artsist and his wife over 25 years - completely out of recycled materials: old plastic bottles, tin cans etc. Impossible to describe, there was so much colour and life that we spent ages happily wandering around. Hopefully the photos will come out... After all that effort we thoroughly deserved the authentic welsh tea that Gaiman is famous for (although I didn´t know that Wales was famous for tea?). The tea-houses seem to compete to be more welsh than each other, roses everywhere, and the food was delicious. It did have an Argentine twist though - in keeping with their usual sweet tooth there was far more cake than scone.

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Comments

[Holly]

It was freezing
Ol, you are crazy the water was freezing but the sea lions were wonderful and worth a few blue fingers and toes!!!

[jessy]

pingwin
nice beardie pengiun... jealous about the vidskype... see you soon xjessy