Puerto Madryn

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Being in a city is great but after a few days we started to crave being somewhere a bit less hectic. Heading to Puerto Madryn to see some Whales seemed like the perfect place stop over on our way to Ushuaia and it didn´t disappoint.

Although the town itself is not much to look at, it has a really nice feel and being by the coast was like a breath of fresh air! We arrived at our hostel around 8am and quickly headed off down to the bay for a coastal walk. We didn´t actually expect to see whales so easily but there they were about 40m from the shore. The hostel guy had said we would probably see them but we didnt actually expect to. We decided to carry on walking along the coast and came across an ecocentre...very educational ;o) and probably one of the first main cultural things we had done. Sadly however a massive school trip got there the same time as us and we were not best pleased to be elbowed out of the way of the touch pool.....bloody kids!

The next day we up bright and early to embark on a whale watching expedition to Penninsula Valdes. It was amazing! Not only did we get to see the Southern right Whales up really close we got to see a colony of elephant seals (god the males are ugly!) and loads of penguins.

After a full day at sea we were knackered and headed back to the hostel for a large meal and a glass of wine. The hostel was great and it was really nice to see people in normal travelling clothes again as opposed to the stilleto crew in BA!

We had read about a Welsh Village in Patagonia which apparently is renowned for its tea houses and so on day 3 we decided to have a day out to have some traditional Welsh?! tea and cakes (Uncle William this trip was for you!). There is no map in the lonely planet guide for this place but hey how hard can it be?! On the way we stopped in Trelew to see a dinosaur museum (we are getting into this whole cultural thing) which was actually really interesting (even though most of it was in Spanish) before getting our connecting bus to Gaimen.

Arriving in Gaimen was a little odd. The bus driver dropped us in the middle of what appeared to be a deserted town (cue tumbleweed) and we kind of stood there open mouthed for a while wondering what the hell to do. There was no one! Eventually after walking a while we found a police station and asked them for tourist information office. They looked a little suprised and we began to wonder if we were the only tourists ever to have arrived. After directing us to our destination we arrived at tourist information where the girl working in there looked so pleased to see someone that she babbbled away inSpanish explaining about all the sights...we didnt really understand much so just nodded politely and signed the visitors book (which Seamus noted only had about 8 names before us for 2008!) and headed off to find the one thing we did understand ´Case de Te´!

We have NEVER seen so many cakes in our lives....I stupidly ordered two portions and we ended up with a whole table of cakes! Was great to have a proper cup of tea, but the cakes were a struggle (even for me!). The lady who owned the place was lovely and it transpires speaks fluent Welsh and teaches it to kids at the local school. Was all very strange and felt like we had been transported to Snowdonia or something.

After buying a couple of trinkets and armed with our doggy bags full of cakes we headed back to Puerto Madryn to pack for the next leg of our journey.....End of the world here we come!!!

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Comments

[Jordana]

Whales
We saw the whales from the shore tonight and I was very excited!! hahaha good to hear we probably have a chance of seeing them again tomorrow as well. :)