Our first stops in Patagonia were the towns of Puerto Madryn and Trelew, in Chubut province (a 17 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires!) Puerto Madryn was founded in 1865, when a group of Welsh settlers were given land here after fleeing Wales due to religious and cultural persecution by the English. They landed at Puerto Madryn, and gradually moved west, founding Trelew, and a few other towns and villages on the way. The area is surrounded by scrubland - the Patagonian Steppe is the fifth largest desert in the world, covering 673,000 square kilometres in the south of the country. It is perfect land for grazing sheep, which is maybe what attracted the Welsh settlers there - other comparisons with Wales are few and far between - it is flat as a pancake and it
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