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Published: February 19th 2008
Vicious Penguin
And you thought they were cuteOur first stops in Patagonia were the towns of Puerto Madryn and Trelew, in Chubut province (a 17 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires!) Puerto Madryn was founded in 1865, when a group of Welsh settlers were given land here after fleeing Wales due to religious and cultural persecution by the English. They landed at Puerto Madryn, and gradually moved west, founding Trelew, and a few other towns and villages on the way. The area is surrounded by scrubland - the Patagonian Steppe is the fifth largest desert in the world, covering 673,000 square kilometres in the south of the country. It is perfect land for grazing sheep, which is maybe what attracted the Welsh settlers there - other comparisons with Wales are few and far between - it is flat as a pancake and it didn´t rain once the whole time we were there!
Puerto Madryn is a cool town anyway - low rise and laid back with miles of beach. Trelew is bigger and less pretty, but we stayed in a funny old fashioned (and quite cool) hotel with a 20s style bar, where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid were apparently once guests. We didn´t make it
Patagonia
Hotter than we thought for a Welsh style afternoon tea (unfortunately), but we did make it to the Trelew dinosaur museum. In 2005, the bones of a terrifying 14m long carnivorous dinosaur were found in the province, the Tyrannotitan Chubutensis. Here´s a pic of what dinosaurolologists think it might look like, if you´re interested:
pic The coast round here is also home to several less extinct and less scary creatures, such as southern right whales, orcas (killer whales), Commerson´s dolphins, Magellanic penguins, elephant seals, and sealions, most of which come here to have babies before migrating off to other parts of the world. Unfortunately the only whale we saw was in skeletal form as we missed their season, and the same with the orcas. We saw all the others though and can report the following - magellanic penguins are cute but smelly and make a noise like a sheep on helium, dolphins are spellbinding, male sealions are HUGE (you would NOT want to get into a fight with one), and seals are cute and fat and amazing swimmers. So there you go.
In other news, the blow of leaving behind the birthplace of rum has been considerably softened by the availability of
Seal type thing
These aren´t my favourite, so lets move on. fantastic Malbec for approximately 1.50 (pounds, english) per bottle. Yum yum. Hopefully at some point in the next few months we will be visiting Argentinian wine country for some vineyard trips, but the next stage in the trip is heading further south to Tierra del Fuego, and Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.
Finally, an aside for any other UK based folks planning on visiting Argentina... It´s a freaking nightmare trying to get money out here. It seems the UK banks have it in for the Argey cashpoints, and will block your card if you try to do anything foolish, like withdrawing money! We´ve been spending several stressful days phoning various banks to get them to unblock our cards. Travellers cheques are the way forward over here it seems...
So, good bye for now! Hoping this finds you all well and happy and looking forward to spring!
lots of love, Nat xxx
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Andyexplores
Andy Vanderveer
Enjoyable
I really like your penguin description, do you work for the Discovery Comedy Channel?