Moby Dick

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Hi again everyone

We arrived in Puerto Madyrn yesterday by overnight coach from Barlioche, which was very plush with massive seats, but two terrible films! It was a bit like flying Business Class (according to Steve !!!)

We decided to travel to Madyrn for the whale watching... After checking out the prices and noticing the vast numbers of old aged pensioners on the tour buses! we decided to hire a car and do the trip on our own.

We hired a stylish, BMW, well not quite! (see photo), we definitely had the sadest car around!...the drive was long and a little tiresome on very gravly roads, but we were on our way to see Whales...so we didnt mind, we were EXCITED....so you can imagine our disappointment when, on arrival at the port at 9am, we were told that the port was closed due to the strong winds and that it may be open again at 3pm, but they werent sure! GREAT!

So we carried on to the rest of the park to see the elephant seals and the penguins. Some of the seals were massive. They seem to have life sorted though....swim a bit, sunbath, swim a bit, sunbath etc etc.

The penguins were very cute..although they sound strangly like donkeys, which was a little disconcerting.

At about 1pm we decided to drive back to the port and see whether the boats were going or not...and thank god they were!

The boat was packed to the hilt with people, but luckily we managed to get a good seat and we had a great view. The whales seemed to be playing up for the cameras...showing off their massive tails etc. One whale took a liking to us and decided to come right under the boat, on ourside and we could literally feel the boat being lifted out of the water., to be honest it was a little frightening, but amazing at the same time..we could probably have touched its fin, if we hadnt all been so shocked by its sudden appearence...Steve managed to get a great photo though....the other photos are unfortunately a little boring, as they just look like grey rocks in the water, but Im sure you can get a rough idea of what we were trying to capture.

Anyway, we were very pleased that we got to see the whales, as tomorrow we are off to Mendoza on a coach taking 24 hours! It would have been very annoying to have travelled 12 hours to Madyrn and not seen the whales and then sat for a further 24hours!

Anyway, alls well that ends well.

Off to drink copious amounts of red wine and have a go at some more horseriding in Mendoza.

Lou & Steve xx

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Photos

It really was this close..
..this was the one that surfaced under the boat right when we were looking over the side not expecting anything. Excellent

Lou in ´Business Class´
...this one was 15 hours..we are just off on a 24 marathon !

Can you spot the large blubbery thing...
....and Steve !