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Published: October 1st 2012
Whale tail.
Nature at it's most beautiful.We awoke on the bus to the scene of, well to be frank, stark, bare, wild, off-green nothingness. As far as the eye could see. In all directions. Without any respite seemingly forthcoming. Hour followed hour, mile ran in to mile along Route 3 towards Puerto Madryn, and you could be forgiven for thinking that life had turned in to a Scooby Doo chase scene, the same background flashing by at regular intervals. The earth is a slightly off mustard colour, dry and dusty and covered in grey-green shrubs which barely rise above 50cms in height. The sheer desolation of the landscape is awinspiring, if somewhat grim; I'd not fancy my chances of survival if the bus broke down and I had to walk to safety. Welcome to Patagonia the near-desert seemed to be saying.
The vast, bleak and slightly Martian-esque landscapes is something that I have been looking forward to seeing since seeing the Welsh/Argentine
Patagonia!
This. For miles. And miles. Infinitely. film "Patagonia" last year (don't let the fact that husky-voiced onetime pop sensation and Diet Coke promoter Duffy appears put you off, it's really rather good). Although captivating to me, the monotony takes it's toll on Eleanor's senses after the first 3 hours, and she was keen to get off the main road and on to the sloping side track to Madryn. Luckily we arrived in town just in time to avoid Ellie's psychological meltdown (although it could be used as an effective torture tool I believe, if the UK was in to that sort of thing, which it isn't of course), but in perfectly good time for me to catch the end of Argentina's rugby match with Australia, in the bus station. Argentina lost, and we went on our way to Yiliana Hostel, which was more of a guesthouse than a hostel (until the students turned up the next night anyway), and was wonderfully situated on Avenida Gales (Wales Avenue). Excellent, we've found Wales and we weren't even trying. After dumping our stuff and having a rather helpful conversation with Miguel (the owner) and Gabriella (a most helpful and lovely person) we headed off to explore this former Welsh
colonial town and Mecca of whale watching.
Our hostel was a stone throw (if Jan Zelezny was throwing it) to the waterfront. I was surprised to find there was a beach, with actual sand, but Eleanor pointed out that I'd not actually bothered to read the guidebook or anything in fact about Madryn and the beach is a rather prominent feature of the town. She (and, I guess, the guidebook) were right that the beach is prominent, it's bloody huge. 4-5km of huge I believe. It's a giant sandy scimatar, slicing it's way between the waters of the Novo Golf and Patagonian soil, from the port to the heady outcrop where 165 Welsh settlers first set foot ashore in 1865. We soaked up the sun and the pleasant views of the ocean and Valdes Penninsula and wandered to the local tourist information centre. It was closed (at 10am) so we went for coffee and medialunas (croissants like things with extra honey) and I wondered how many Welsh street names I could spot on the map. 10 was my ultimate count, but I cheated and used Ave. Gales in there. This is by no means a correct answer,
Whale showing off!
Whale showing off for the cameras! it was early and a bit of a lazy effort. Eleanor, however, stopped me wasting anymore time by proclaiming that a bike ride was in order. A 50km bike ride. Luckily I was able to defer such an arduous undertaking until after lunch. We made use of our time to cross the bay in the opposite direction too. We again managed to form a pack with local strays, who followed us for 8km. At the far end of the wind swept bay we found the dwelling of the first settlers (hovels carved in to the rock) and momuments to the local tribe, the Tehuelche, and said colonists. There were two museums, but predictably they were closed; tourism here plays by it's own rules, opening hours suit proprietors more than tourists and things are done to a much less strict time table, sometimes this is great sometimes it is bloody infuriating. The dogs didn't seem to mind though, they just chased each other round, play fighting and drank from random puddles, Ellie and I tried to embrace their carefree spirit, taking pleasure from the coastal walk, the breaking sea, blustering wind and more showboating whales.
Madryn is a
Patagonian Steppe
The most interesting bit of Patagonian Steppe...seriously. tourist town with a substantial industrial economy as we found on our trip out to the Valdes Penninsula. To get to the national park and to enjoy the beaches you must first pass though a huge industrial estate and landfill site. Trebles all round to the town planners! After that lovely, post-apocolyptic nightmare of lorry fumes, industrial processing run off and pedddling we reached the start of the penninsula and a bumpy gravel track. The views of the Novo Gulf were nice but we failed to spot any Whales until we reached one of the beaches. We stood on the beach munching on boiled sweets and within minutes several whales breached the surface of the water only 100 metres or so from the shore. They continually surfaced, spraying water from their airholes before disappearring beneath the gentle waves. Occassionally they would flirtatiously flick their tales out of the wate, but never in the classical, BBC documentary style. We watched on for around an hour before black clouds on the horizion had us worrying about being caught in a downpour. We sped a hasty retreat back to Madryn and the comfort of a warm restaurant and seafood paella and casserole.
Sunrise over Novo Golf
Sunrise at Puerto Madryn On day two we decided to up the ante in this whale watching game and jumped on the bus to Puerto Piramides. Being in a national park it requires each foreign national to fork out AR$100 to enter, no idea why it should be this much as there's nothing else here apart from some seals and that lovely Patagonian shrub. Oh, an a lighthouse I think. I'm a firm beleiver that national parks should not be profit making so that they are accessible to all, but this seems a pretty high price and I'd query where the money goes. All the boat trips to see the whales leave from this tiniest of villages on the Valdes Peninsula (it's esssentially two dusty streets and a beach), and it sits on the cusp of a cove making it ideal for our aquatic mammalian friends to mate and give birth in (which is why we're here, it's essentially whale voyerism). Rather annoyingly all the tours seem to arrive at the same time as the local bus! Luckily for us the tours seem to cater only for sheep as every single person headed for the same company, the one with the shiny
Gaiman's Tunnel
The train tunnel (only one idiot to be seen) new building, while we headed over the road to one of the smaller buildings. On our trip there were 7 of us whilst the other boats looked overcroweded and it seemed like each new whale siting would be accompanied by a rugby scrum on deck. We had a great crew who spent time talking to us about the nature of the whales, their migration patterns (the whales', not the guides'😉 and mating habits (again the whales', you have fithy minds), and we went a hell of way out of the cove to find the best whale spots, an no other company seemed to bother. A mother an calf came to check out the boat and showed off for several minutes before becoming bored and swimming away. We then found a group of 6 males and a female (who appeared to be flirting outrageously), which circled the boat and came within half a metre of us. Our encounter with this group lasted for the majority of our 90 minutes on the water. Ellie commented that watching the mating ritual was amazing but at the same time "...when you think about it, you're watching whale porn." Quite...time for a shower to wash
the nastiness off, perhaps a David Attenborough reference would have been better suited. I cannot recommend this trip highly enough, at AR$380 it seemed a lot of money but it's impossible to describe the experience and to do it justice, it was just wonderful and I'd implore you to do it when you have the opportunity!! You'll certainly get the whale tale photo that is obligatory, what's stopping you from doing it? (If you've an answer to this it's wrong, you've no reason not to come here at some point. Start saving now).
So, after all that excitment (we also walked to the end of the peninusla which was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours, bit dusty though), our next day had to be a bitmore sedate. We headed off to do one of the things that had drawn me to Patagonia, we set off to the former Welsh colonies of Trelew and Gaiman. Trelew was a bit of a let down to be honest, the Palaeontology museum was closed (no giant sloth fossils for Eleanor) and the Patagonia Life museum was gone, only the old railay station building that housed it remained. There's
Argentina & Wales
Ellie with the two flags of Gaiman little else here that I could see, except the first chapel the Welsh built, but that was 20 minutes south and it seemed a bit far for what would essentially amount to a ten minute photo opportunity and a bit of a gawp at Welsh names on tombstones. Not for us, we jumped on a bus and made a 30 minute or so journey to Gaiman. As an aside, the Argentines pronounce Trelew with a south Walain accent, it made me smile everytime I heard it spoken.
Gaiman is a farming town on the Chubut river but it's wierd. Welsh flags (Yr Ddraig Goch) fly along side that of Argentina, the street names are a hybrid of Spanish and Welsh, the vacant tourist information box is painted green and decorated with a 2.2m dragon and information signs are trilingual (Spanish, Cymraeg, English). Across the town there are Casa de Te Galesa (Welsh tea houses) whith names such as Ty Gwyn (The White House), Ty Nain (Gran's House) and Plas y Coed (The Mansion of Trees) all serving tea and cakes. They are geared up for tourism and open at 3pm when the tour coaches pile into town,
My Pack
Awesome dogs. also conveniently near the hour of British high tea. The cake selection includes tasty scones, torta negra (torta galesa for branding purposes), apple pie and other cakes but disappointingly no taisen cymraeg (Welsh cakes, although Ty Gwyn did have the receipe on a tea towel on the wall). It was rather pleasant, Ty Gywn had love spoons, harps, photos of castles, mannequins in tradtional dress and you could forget you are not in rural Camarthenshire or Brecon but in the unforgiving lands of Patagonia! However, it was £12 each for the privalege, which by comparison makes my grans' tea and cake an absolute bargin (they should probably start charging me after this)!
But Gaiman is more than just tea and cake, the traces of the colonial past are dotted all around, the first house build here in the 1870's by the globe trotting David Roberts is a rather drab adobe bungalow situated at the bottom of a small hillock. It's three rooms and although the Robert's family seemed to have plenty of money they didn't spend much of it on their home. It's remarkable that it is still standing in my eyes, but for 30p entry it
David Roberts' Stuff
Gaiman's first resident's stuff was very interesting and the guide very informative. The old railway tunnel was a fun experience for Ellie and I. It is a curved 300m tunnel and due to it's shape becomes pitch black pretty quickly and it's difficult for the eyes to adjust (especially following the bright sunlight). We staggered through the dark, me attempting to use my iPhone light to give us some help but it was worse than useless. The complete black lasts around 30m I would guess but we were pretty pathetic at negotiating this, it probaby didn't help that we found the whole experience of bumping in to each other in the dark much more hilarious than in fact it actually was. We were essentially two idiots playing the worlds worst game of Blind Man's Bluff; it was most unbecoming. The Welsh came here because of persecution of their language and their religion. The school was built to help preserve the language (and it's still taught today), the building is one of the oldest in the town (along with the post office) and was pretty quaint. The chapel (and the Welsh here loved building chapels in the maps of Chubut are to be believed) is
Seafood and Beer
Seafood and Beer. Tasty on the far side of town and is pretty non-descript but to me it served as a monument to the perseverance and spirit of the colonists.
Before leaving we headed to the museum in the old railway station. It is four small rooms that document all aspects of the colony and life there in, but also of how the Welsh tamed the Chubut valley and made it arable (backbreaking work in excavating irrigation canals). The curator was a fascinating man of Welsh, Italian and Spanish descent and who chatted to us at length about all manner of topics and gave us a great insight into Gaiman's history and present (they still hold an Eistefodd here). We tried to converse in Welsh but my accent confused him a bit (something that clearly translates from my English!) although I succeeded in talking with his octogenarian mother who had no trace of an Argentine accent and spoke Cymraeg as her first langauge. It rounded off a rather surreal yet enjoyable day, before we had to literally run for the bus back to Madryn!
Diolch Chubut. Rydych wedi bod yn wych; apologies to those of you who can
Cymraeg.
Cymraeg everywhere... speak Welsh for butchering that. Next stop is El Calafate and El Chalten, a mammoth bus journey of 2400km away from Madryn.
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Maisondubonheur
Pierre-Alexandre
Nearly bump in each other
Hi, would have been fun to bump in another tb member...Puerto Madryn and Peninsula Valdes are going to receive some nice attention with your blog! Peter