Advertisement
Published: February 4th 2006
Edit Blog Post
We promise we won´t only update this with stories of animals - no matter how cute they are, but we have to just mention a few more first!
We actually missed a huge colony of animals off the journal last time and that was the elephant seals we saw in Punta Norte, with many many pups body popping their way along the beach!
Anyway, following that, we visited a place called Punta Tombo - the place that was the main reason we stayed at Puerto Madryn, and probably even Argentina! Here is the biggest colony of Magellanic Penguins in the world with over 1.5 million of the little beauties running around! The area they live at for 5 months of the year is about 200 hectares, which sounds huge, but you can´t walk 3 steps without nearly standing on a whole family (much giggling and squeaking ensued for the time we spent here!), I´m still expecting to find a chick that Katie has smuggled out. Photos may say more on this matter than we can here, but it was fascinating just sitting on a rock a few feet away from any of them watching how inquisitive and interested in
you they are... and also hilarious watching them running as fast as they could to the beach for a swim!
Whilst in this area we also went out on a smallish dinghy to hopefully see some dolphins. Not expecting to see much we were more than happy spotting a few sea lions hassling fishermen for food, and even a lone penguin about 80 miles from the colony. After about an hour though we were treated to a superb display by Commerson Dolphins swimming in the wake of the boat and underneath it. We´d never heard of the species before, but they are stunning, nearly all white apart from their head, dorsal fin and tail, and even these had babies with them!
We ended up spending 6 nights in Puerto Madryn which was no hardship as the place was boiling (37 degrees we heard) and had a sandy beach which stretched off to the distance. We heard there was a sealion colony in cyling distance from the centre so we duly hired bikes and tried to get there... but the shadeless dusty open roads beat us, so we spent the day lazing on the beach instead!
In true
beach resort style on Saturday night there was a free show on the beachfront which involved a group of dancers in full Argentinian dress performing a Milonga dance. This is a mix of Tango and Line Dancing, but much more energentic with the men practically breaking their ankles in the process and lots of yelping and clapping from the crowd, great fun to watch.
From here we briefly stayed in Rio Gallegos, a bit of an inbetween town that most people have to go through to go further South. It was once again an 18 hour bus journey, which had its ups and downs. We had the luxurious chair/bed so got lots of sleep, but also an hour into the journey were evicted from the bus and left in a tiny bus station awaiting a replacement for the shattered windscreen - the roads here are largely unpaved and pretty basic. Unfortunately the journey went from 18 hours to 21 with just 3 biscuits to see us through the last leg! The view out the window has been pretty unchanging throughout Patagonia, with mile upon mile of scrubland; however, this section had a few things to look out for -
the odd pack of llamas and even a few rheas! (We have yet to see the elusive skunk though.)
Although we have been struggling a bit with the Argentine dialect, Matt is keen to practice Spanish with a few conversations when possible - one of the most successful so far being with a taxi driver on arrival in Rio Gallegos, and in true Brit style it was about the weather... as it was raining!
Rio Gallegos is odd, with so many through travellers yet so little there! We tried to go to 5 museums, all of which were the size of a small house and all of which were closed for January for refurbishment! We were left with the cultural museum of the area (Santa Cruz) which pleased us both as had pictures of paper mills and printing presses!!! The place is also very very windy, so wandering around was a bit out of the question - luckily it was Matt´s birthday whilst here so we holed up in a parrilla and ate bucket loads of meat washed down with a few shandies. Don´t fret though, we have managed to spot some animals... two tiny kittens were feeding
from their mum outside our room at the hotel one morning!
The luxury of the buses disappeared for the 12 hour journey to Ushuaia (the southern most city in the world by all accounts). The journey was spent almost exactly 50:50 between travelling and queuing at border crossings, as we had to go in and out of Chile - much fun. Was also quite a site seeing the minefield warning signs as we travelled through the Chilean section. The scenery finally changed from the almost barren lands of Patagonia to beautiful rolling hills, forested valleys, lakes and snow capped peaks about 2 hours before arriving in Ushuaia - the place is absolutely stunning. It is even better when in the city, glacier topped mountains fade down into the beagle channel with its many islands dotted along it with mountain ranges on both sides. The first afternoon here we took a boat down the channel and although it was really choppy and hugely windy (we got very wet!) it was so beautiful to see these islands and the surrounding view from a distance.
We managed a touch of walking today, and reached the Martial Glacier overlooking the city, the
Ushuaia
Ushuaia and the Beagle Channel from the Martial Glacier first bit of exercise we´ve done in a while, but the place and the views were well worth it. We plan on having a wander round the National Park tomorrow (and hope to see the beavers living there!), and then it´s on to Punta Arenas in Chile on Sunday, before starting to make our way North again.
We have both adapted particularly well to the travelling lifestyle, and are getting so excited at each new place... long may it continue! xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.309s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0511s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb