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Published: October 20th 2006
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Southern Right Wales
Maz will have to eat his hat! Anyway.... So our journey from BA to Puerto Madryn took another 20 hours but the buses are great and we watched 3 films and slept loads. After all these bus journeys the one hour bus to work is gonna be a doddle when I get back!
We got to PM quite late and hadnt booked our hostel so we walked around for a while trying to find a nice place to stay but they were either really expensive, or the rooms werent the best, but luckily we found this place called Residential Manolos which is small room with bunk beds but its clean, has heating and cable TV... and its cheap. It was about 9ish when we found this place and the lady who owns it asked us if we wanted to go on the Whale watching trip the next day which meant waking up at 6 to get the bus for 7. We were uming and aring but she told us that they were gonna be English speaking which we heard is important to have so we agreed to it even though we were knackered!
So the next morning as my alarm woke us up we really couldnt
be bothered but we went to breakfast and met 2 other couples who were going on the same trip, one couple from Arizona and one couple from Holland. They turned out to be really really nice and contributed to a really really good day.
First the tour took us to see big fat elephant seals. The babies are cute but they get ugly as they get older, poor things. We were waiting for either 2 of the big males to fight (one was really trying it on but the other werent bothered to move), or for killer whales to come up to shore and take one (I KNOW THATS SO MEAN OF ME BUT what a vision that would have been)! But they just laid there grunting and wobbling. They so huge and amazing animals though. Theres one male to about 30 females.
Then we went and saw the Southern Right whales..... OH MY GOD! It was amazing. Theyve counted about 700 at the moment in the waters, they come here ever year to give birth and we saw loads with their calves and go really close up to the shore. Maz was like Ill eat my hat
if they do flips out of the water... and guess what! they did!!! loads of them. It was amazing to see all these HUGE mammals do all these flips and come so close to the boat etc etc. One of the babies was having a tantrum and hitting its tail continously in the water. Apparently the tour guide said its because his mum refused to give him milk.... hmm. Other information we found out is that the males line up and take it in turns to 'play' with the female so they don't know who the father is so they say its the one with the biggest te sti cle.... hehehehe. We werent sure if she said it right at first so Maz asked her to repeat it and then like kids the six of us began to laugh our heads of.
On the second day we went to see the biggest penguin colony. Theres about a million of them and its such a spectacular sight, all these penguins in couples making their nests ready for their babies. We we told we werent allowed to touch them... YEAH RIGHT... all these cute little penguins.. as if.... so I
HOW CUTE.!!
How could we resist touching! touched 2 with my index finger on my right hand. (I found one that was sleeping). Then I made Maz touch him too. Maz then got attacked by another penguin who wouldnt stop pecking his leg. But afterwards he allowed us to get really close to him... Its so beautiful to be able to walk with these wild birds. We also saw two mating...hehehehe.
BUT was was truly amazing was at the end, another penguin started attacking Maz (I KNOW I KNOW)! but then The penguin started following Maz and they both waddled side by side and then they turned and faced each other, Maz spread his arms out to the side and the penguin did the same with his wings and then at the same time they started flapping together. The tour guide and the other couple with us were just as amazed and Im still gutted to this day that my battery had run out so I couldnt have filmed it. After the colony we went to Trelew to their dinosaur museum which was really fascinating. All these real bones they found in Patagonia and theyve put them together... they are really huge and scary. Theyve also
heheheheheh
attacked again! got a lab in the museum with archiologists at work which I could have stayed all day to watch them.
However, we had to leave and get the bus to Rio Gallegos, making our way to the next stop...Puerto Natales
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