Blogs from Puerto Madryn, Chubut, Argentina, South America - page 17

Ok, i am still kind of hung over while writing this so do forgive me if there are some errors!! We left Buenos Aires in a poof of smoke on Friday evening. The journey to the bus station was an experience, the subway in 30-odd degree heat during rush hour, no bueno. Anyway aswe left we were all in good form and excited to be on the move again, unfortunately this didn´t last long, as we were walking through the station all 7 of us with back packs and day packs completely covering our person, Niall jokendly mentioned that we were so touristy that someone should rub us so............they did. Niall had his pocket picked losing his cards and about 200 pesos. Not a good start to a 17 hr bus journey to Puerto Madryn. So ... read more

Well after saying goodbye to my mom and Scott, Laurence and I embarked on a new chapter of this adventure, heading cross country to the Atlantic and then onwards to Mendoza to return our rental truck before heading north into Bolivia. It was a great 4 weeks with my parents in Argentina and one that will provide dinner table stories for years to come. All in all, the road trip went well with little problems and only an occasional visit by a grumpy ogre... once or twice at most. Heading East we crossed Argentina on a provincial dirt road that afforded amazing views of the surrounding Patagonian landscape. Rainclouds filtered the sun and dusted the rolling hills with prisms of light all along the way, something truly spectacular. After three hours we finally encountered tarmac and ... read more

OK, here we go again... Flew into Trelew (old welsh colony - they moved there because they were fed up of the English and it appears most have moved away from here because they were fed up with the Argentinians.....) Stayed in Puerto Madryn, which is on the Valdes Peninsular - a large sea-life reserve on the Atlantic coast. Its where they filmed the famous orca footage of them taking sealion pups from the shore. Its also one of the best places to sea Southern Right Whales. Unfortunately we didn t see any Orcas and its the wrong time of the year for Right Whales. We did see the sea lion colonies, Elephant seals and hundreds of Magallen penguins though as well as loads of birds and Alpacas. Trelew is famous for its dinosaur fossils and ... read more

I feel like i got away with something.... the sun is out til 9:30. i think i´ll try to skip winter more often. anyways just a quick update: flight was long- more than 24 hours of airports and planes, then we began the road trip the day of my arrival. we tried to make it to las grutas (one of the last beaches south of buenos aires, further south the water is cold and the shore is too rocky) in one day (10 hour drive from buenos aires), but we left late and didn´t make it. we tried to find a hotel at 12 am but everything was full. the funny part was there were a group of a few cars with us that kept going to the next hotel to check availability.... it was like ... read more

In terms of fauna the Peninsula Valdes and specifically this hotel is the top attraction of Argentina. Depending on when you are visiting you can spot seals, dolphins, killer whales, whales. This official site of Madryn has some nice calendars and a lot of useful information on the area madryn with a very nice map of the area map In our trip we were very lucky, sea elephants were present in large groups. Unfortunately the males were out in the sea and are expected back on the beach in January. Males are around 4000 kg while females are 'just' 700 - 900 kg! We were even more lucky with the whales. The season for watching the Right Whale (noordkaper (NL)) officially ends 15th of Dec. And we were at Punta Piramides port for watching the whales ... read more