Peninsula Valdez

---

The weather in Trelew was lovely. It was a warm and sunny day. We drove out of town a little way to see the old welsh settlement of Gaiman, set in a pretty little fertile green valley along the river and with beautiful brick-built houses. The welsh settled this whole valley, and the sight of green trees and grass, is so refreshing after the dry arid landscape for the last few hundred kilometres.
From Trelew we headed 115km back south to visit South America's largest penguin colony, at Punta Tombo. As we left the car, we remembered the binoculars, imagining we would have to view the penguins from a reasonable distance. We paid our entry fee and were told not to get closer to the penguins than 1 metre. Hardly likely, we thought….as we nearly trippped over one beside the path! This truly is a huge colony and you are able to get right up close to the penguins. They are spread over a vast area of scrubby land, a considerable distance from the sea, and they are dotted about in holes they have made for their nests, sitting sunbathing, or in the shade under the low, spiky bushes, just sitting and squawking or honking. They seem oblivious to humans around and will happily waddle comically across the path in front of you. The smell of guano is pretty overpowering! We spent a good couple of hours there, watching the funny creatures up close and watching them playing on the beach, swimming for fish and surfing in on the waves.
After Punta Tombo, we headed north again to Puerto Madryn, where we planned to spend a couple of days. We were looking forward to getting back in the tent. We found a pretty good campsite, just out of town and behind the beach and headed to the supermarket. We had a lie in the next day, relieved not to have to get up and drive a few hundred kilometres, but it was a hot and sunny day, and it was too hot to stay in the tent past about 9am.
We headed off to explore the coast and the surrounding beaches and the next day, we drove up to Peninsula Valdez, which is about 100kms north and west of Puerto Madryn. The peninsula is famous for being it's marine wildlife and in particular for being a breeding ground for whales and in the right season, they are not hard to spot...apparently. We weren't there in the right season, but it was beautiful scenery anyway and we had a lovely seafood lunch down in Puerto Piramides, the only town on the peninsula.
By the time we arrived in Puerto Madryn, we had done a few thousand kms in the car and the tyre were starting to look very worn. We had switched the front and back tyres in Torres del Paine, replacng the worst back tyre with the spare, but now the otherback tyre was worn to the limit, so we spent a morning in P. Madryn trying to find a replacement tyre. It turned out that that size of tyre is particular to Chilean vehicles and therefore not available in Argentina. We had to go for the nearest match and then we were on our way again; this time on Ruta 25 across country.

---