Back to Wales

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We had booked our stay ay El Retorno Hostel over the phone with the aid of Skype, which has been proving very useful throughout the course of our trip. Therefore we had been able to secure a ride from the bus terminal when we arrived at just gone 7 in the morning. We were dropped to our hostel where we were met by the couple who ran the place.

We were sat down in the cafe area and were bombarded with tour information, when we just wanted to go to bed. Puerto Madryn is primarily visited for the Peninsula Valdes which is nearby, and where you are able to view the southern right whale at the right time of year. Unfortunately this was not the right time of year, but our hosts were willing to sell us the peninsula trip at the same price anyway, although we would not see the whales. Hmm well that sounded like a fair deal. Not.

However we would get to see sealions, penguins, and sea elephants. And there was the tiny possible insignificantly small chance that we might get to see the intentional stranding of baby sealions by preying orcas. Well Katie has been obsessed with the idea of seeing whales in the wild since we began our trip, but unfortunately we have ended up in all the wrong places at the wrong time, so we decided to take this trip on a long shot. We booked on for the next day, then asked if we could have a shower/ even use the bathroom. Our host did not seem pleased with our request and even though there was a shared communal bathroom she told us that guests would be using it until 10am so we would have to wait. This is the first time ever this has happened to us in a hostel- we weren't even able to use the toilet! We then noticed the sign which stated clearly that guests were not permitted to use the kitchen or bathroom after check out. A shower would cost 8 pesos after check out (£1.33) and we assumed she was toying with the idea of charging us before check in. Fortunately she made a wise decision and eventually let us shower for free, as we would have left if she had tried to charge us.

We had wanted to spend our first day visiting the Welsh town of Gaiman, just a few hours away. Our host suggested to not go until 3pm as none of the tea shops opened before then. There was strangely no direct bus from Puerto Madryn (which we should have taken as a sign) so we had to take a bus to another town first, then another bus out. We got halfway to the bus station and realised we had definitely chosen the wrong wardrobe for the day. It was steaming hot and we were in jeans. We had to head back and change into vests and shorts- the weather was completely different than in Bariloche.

It took us about 2.5 hours to get to Gaiman, and we were a little shocked when we arrived. In Puerto Madryn it is noted as a touristy place to visit, so we were expecting to see people. Instead it was like a ghost town. There were a few (very touristic) tea houses plastered with red dragons and ye olde style script, in Spanish. We spent the afternoon looking around the tea houses but there were no scones or clotted cream which was a bit of a disappointment. It was £10-15 each for a pot of tea and a few cakes which loooked like angel cake and cookies. We were not impressed, so instead decided to check out some of the places recommended in the tourist information hut. We saw the old post office which was really cute, and some of the first houses of the Welsh settlers.

As it was the siesta, although the tea shops were open, nothing else was. We had wanted to go to eat but the only restaurant we could find was closed from 3.30pm until 7pm, so we wound up buying a hotdog off a boy in a shed. After a pretty fruitless day we slept on the bus journey home. We were exhausted as the previous night bus had not allowed for a good sleep. The Patriot had been showing (in Spanish) and really loud until gone 2am, and we had arrived at 7am. On the way back to the hostel we decided to stop by a supermarket (one of our favourite activities still) where we were astounded by the selection available. They actually sold stuff we recognised which was a first. We bought food for picnics the following day and headed back to make dinner. We got chatting to a Japanese man who had retired and left his family at home to travel the world. He was very interesting, but our feelings towards him changed when later that night he metamorpised into a wild bore with the loudest snoring we have ever encountered. The blinds were literally rattling.

The next day we had to be up at 6.30 as our pick up was going to be early. We were collected around 8 (late as usual) and started to make our way towards to the Peninsula Valdes. The majority of the day was spent in the minibus with four stops to see wildlife, then a half an hour stop at the end to see a beach. There was no stop to buy food, so we were extremely pleased that we had had brought a picnic. Due to the wildlife protection schemes on the peninsula, we were not able to get very close to the animals. However, our guide had brought along a set of binoculars which we passed around. There were sealion males present which we hadn't seen before; they actually had manes and we could see why they were called sealions they were huge. We saw the sea lions at Punta Norte where they had recently mated and there were loads of pups.

Unfortunately for us (not for the sealions) the pups were too young to go in the sea, so the orcas did not come. Obviously we were disappointed but we hadn't really expected to see any.
The sea elephants were few and far between and we had to make two stops to try and find them. They were a good 200-300 metres away from the viewing points so it was impossible to see whether we were looking at an animal or a rock. At one of the stops we had been walking along in our flip flops for a good 15 minutes before our guide mentioned that there were black widows nests everywhere. He then showed us their webs and we saw two spiders. Katie was upset that we weren't warned before and neurotically checked herself for black widow bites.

The penguins were the highlight of the day as they are really inquisitive animals, so came right up to the fence to see who we were, and to generally show off. We watched them scratching and flapping around for a while then had to leave. After a quick stop at a beach we headed back to the hostel. We prepared dinner and breakfast and lunch for the following day, then started chatting to some guys from Buenos Aires. We ended up heading to one of the 3 local casinos with them to go and see what all the fuss was about, and we were astounded at how busy it was. Casinos are huge in Patagonia, and have been present in every town we have visited so far. We spent the hour watching the tables which was quite interesting but we still couldn't figure out the rules to the games.

The following day we had our final overnight bus. We spent the morning finalising arrangments for our stay in Buenos Aires, then headed to the terminal to catch the lowest class bus, which turned out to be ok.

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