Chubut - The oceans playground

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Its 4.50am, the silence is broken, the alarm going off signals it´s time to leave. Time to leave the paradise of Punta Del Diablo. Time to leave the friends I had made there. Time to leave SKye. Saying goodbye has never been a strong point of mine, but being half asleep still somehow made it less painful. SO I walked with Daniel in the pitch black to the bus stop to catch the 5.5 am bus. The wind is blowing a gale, typically the bus is late. Could have had 15 more minutes in bed. It doesn´t matter, I´m on my way. The first stop would be Motevideo, a mere 5 hours down the road. Here I would wait 4 hours for my Buque bus to take me to Colonia, here I will have my heart broken in two. The bus ride was awesome, there were such bad storms, lightening all around, the roads were flooded, it was great. Oh hang on, the bus windows leak, things aren´t so great afterall.

Having devoured my double quarter pounder with cheese in an instance (yes i have had MacDonalds in every country so far) my arm gets grabbed while walking back to sit down and wait for my connecting bus. Skye was running round like a crazy girl trying to get cash. There bus left in 10 minutes. It was here my heart was broken, saying goodbye for a second time when I was fully awake really hurt. Should I just have let her walk completely out of my life? Should I have gone with them? I don´t know. I had my own plans, my own objectives, and unfortunately they took me the opposite direction to her. It would take me 2 days to convince myself I am dojng the right thing.

My bus to Colonia took 2 hours. Once there I ran into problems at customs as the ticket office in Montevideo kept my slip of paper I needed. After 15 minutes of arguing, I don´t really think they understood what I was saying, they let me through without having to pay the 100 dollar fine.

Once back in Buenos Aires I walked directly to the bus terminal and hopped straight on a bus to Puerto Madryn. The bus journey would take me over 1,300,000 metres, thats around 800 miles. It would take the best part of 15 hours. After we had been travelling for a few hours i looked out the window and it was completely flat, like being in a desert. I thought we were going along the beach so thought no more of it. It wasn´t until i woke up some 6 hours later and it was light that i realised it is still completely flat. It was like driving through a desert which had low shrubs covering it. The landscape was dry and barron. It reminded me of watching wildlife programes at home, I was waiting to see an elephant or giraffe come past the window, but it never happened. So why is the landscape this way? How can I be in Patagonia and it be so flat? Well, the whole region i am driving through used to be under the sea. It wasn´t until the Andes sprang out of the ground in western Patagonia that this part of the world was raised above sea level. The reason it is so dry is that the moist air from the pacific ocean (i am on the atlantic side) is forced up over the Andes where it condenses and discharges itself over western Patagonia, hence why they have all the lakes etc. What is left is dry air coming accross to the east and as a result hardly any rainfall all year long.

So i pulled into Puerto Madryn around lunch time, once again i had no hostel booked and no money. So first stop, as usual, bank and internet cafe. I got to my hostel and booked up the trips to see the Whales, penguins etc. They were quite expensive, but the woman promised me they were worth it, she was right. In the afternoon i took a walk to the beach and out along the pier. At the end of the pier i saw my first whale in the distance. After a week of trying to see one in Uruguay i had seen one withing a few hours of being here.

On Wednesday I was woken up early to get the tour bus which left at 8. It was like having your mother come in and wake you up for school, slightly bizarre. The bus took us down towards Peninsula Valdes. A few miles down the road we stopped at the beach to see if we could spot some whales. Wow, now this was totally crazy. There were like 20 Southern Right Whales no more than 20-30 metres from the beach, just laying there, rolling around. It was unbelievable. To see these animals so close to the sure was breath taking. After 15 minutes of watching we returned to the bus and drove for about an hour to the port. From here we went on a boat trip to go and see the whales. Now I have been on trips before to see dolphins and whales and never seen any, so my expectations weren´t that high. Boy what a mistake. The boat literally had to avoid the whales as there were so many. If you check out Peninsula Valdes on a map you will see that it forms two bays with the mainland. Scientists are currently working in the smaller bay to the North and have recorded over 1,200 different whales there. Considering the bay i was in is 3 times the size, you can imagine how many whales i saw. To begin with you would see the baby whales as they come up to the boat to be nosey. Then mummy whale would come along, and mummy whale was ridiculous. The mums generally grow to over 17 metres and made our boat look tiny. to see such creatures swimming under the boat and then surfacing, rolling and flipping their tales was just ridiculous. The reason so many whales come to this area is that the small entrance into the bays prevent Orca´s from coming in and eating the young. So they come here to rest, mate, breed, grow the young and then leave again.

After the boat trip it was back in the bus to go and see the elephant seals. These fat lazy seals just lay on the beach for everyone to see. They lay in large packs which contains one dominat male who mates with the females. If another male comes into his territory there will be a fight. Some of the seals we saw had puncture wounds with blood coming out. The baby elephant seals were so cute, they were small and black and looked so cuddly. Not quite as impressive as the whales but amazing all the same.

From here it was a short bus trip up the road to see a small penguin colony that nest on the hill next to the road. It is crazy at how close you can get to these penguins and they dont even flinch.

While driving between the sealife spots, we saw some Patagonian Hares. Now compared to hares at home these things look more like dear. They grow to over 15kg and are massive.

After a long bus ride back, there is no tarmac roads on the peninisula, i literally cooked pizza and went to bed at .

On thursday I went on another trip to see dolphins and penguins. The first stop of the day was Rawson, which is the capital of the Chubut region. Here we got into quite a small inflatable boat and went to see the dolphins. Now it was quite windy today and the sea was very rough, so hurtling along in the small boat was one hell of a ride. They had to tell the people sitting at the front to come back down into the main part of the boat to prevent them from going over board. Trying to find the dolphins was hard work, and when we did you had no chance of capturing one on camera. They only grow to 1.5 metres long and are so quick that you just end up with pictures of the sea. But it was a thoroughly enjoyable hour or so watching them jump around and zoom under the boat.

the next stop was Puerto Tombo. This place was like no other i´ve ever been. you pull into the car park and there are penguins nesting next to cars. The landscape is so dry and barron that it makes you wonder why the penguins come here. the males dig a nest into the ground or under a bush and then sound their mating call to attract a partner. Once they have got a partner they will never part and about 60percent of them will use the same nest every year. I have no idea how they find their nest again but they do. There were around 750,000 penguins on this part of the coast, all nesting, all mating, some protecting their eggs. The female penguin will lay one egg, and then 7 days later lay another egg. They only ever lay 2 a year. it then takes 40 days for the baby penguins to hatch and then parents then take it in turns to go and gather food. considering some of the nests are 100s of metres from the sea it can up to a week for the penguin to go feed itself and then bring back food for the baby. quite incredible.

So this was my few days in Puerto Madryn. It has been totally crazy, I fully recommend people stop for a visit here if they are in the area.

My next stop is Bariloche to try my hand at kayaking, climbing, rafting, trekiking, mountain biking etc etc. Will provide an update soon.

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Comments

[Mum]

Your reputation of not being an early bird obviously precedes you, if you are receiving early morning calls!!,