Blogs from Chubut, Argentina, South America - page 12

This is a 1 horse kind of town. Actually, we saw 4 horses, so we kept changing the name with each additional horse that came into view. We were walking down the street singing out loud, ¨Oh just wandering around a 1 hourse town, I mean a 2 horse town.... na na na.¨Ect.... Puerto Pyramides is a 4 horse town. There are 300 residents, and the town itself is located in a rounded bay on Reserve Valdez, a island-shaped peninsula connected to mainland Argentina by a small sliver of desolate land. The entire island is covered in short drouht tolerent shrubs. Kids run amuk, shooting up and down the street on suped up quads and little go-carts. Many of them carrying groceries and such, but others, obviously just trying to have some fun. The police station ... read more

After our crazy week in Buenos Aires we moved onto northern Patagonia. I had forgotten in my haste with the previous blog to tell two key facts that meant we had experienced BA 100%. The first that we got massively ripped off by a taxi driver and the second that we were handed fake money, its not a trip to Beunos Aires without these hiccups. It was no small secret that the taxis drivers outside our hostel were drug dealers masquerading as taxi drivers! According to our guide in northern patagonia if you´ve not tried Matte tea, you´ve not visited Argentina...so we´ll say the same about our misfortunes in BA! We had fully psyched ourselves up for cold weather down in Patagonia, afterall we are suspiciously close to Antartica, but this was not to be - ... read more

Trelew Not too far away from Madryn there is a small city whose name is Trelew (Welsh for "city of Lewis") which has a few things to offer, but none better than its position on the map. Of those things it has to boast is the Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio, or simply MEF, which claims to be one of the most important paleontological museums on this planet. It certainly has a great display with fossils of different periods, of plants, eggs, and dinosaurs. The dinosaurs they show range in size from the small 30cm Gasparinisaur to the enormous Argentinosaur. This last one is absolutely enormous. Even though they have only a few of its bones these are enough to let the imagination run loose and lead one to contemplate how life would be with these record-holding ... read more

Puerto Madryn The regular route that travelers in South A. take has a place called El Bolson next on the itinerary after Bariloche. El Bolson is known as a bohemian's town, often brimming with backpackers looking to explore the surrounding wilderness or getting wrecked alongside people from all ends of the Earth. It sounds like an intriguing place but I didn't come to this continent to see tourists. So I decided to head east to Puerto Madryn and observe a different kind of "wild"life. A port town, Puerto Madryn is located on a scenic piece of Atlantic Argentinean coast and serves as base camp for tourists wanting to see the Reserva Faunistica Peninsula Valdes (Valdes Peninsula Wildlife Reserve). The main attraction arrives in April: southern right whales on a migratory path north, following the schools of ... read more

We arrived at 9am after our 18 hour bus trip to a small town called Puerto Madryn which was founded by the Welsh!! The town itself is nice but would be nothing without its local peninsula which is the only reason we were there. On arrival we found out where the campsite was and set up camp straight away. We headed back into town to see what we were going to do about the Peninsula. We went to a few agencies and they were all charging extortinate rates for a day trip which we politely turned down. After w while of thinking we bumped into a couple we met the day before at the bus station from spain (Vivi and Gustavo). They too were in the same predicamint. I suggested we rent a car and DIY ... read more