Following Buenos Aires we jumped on another long 18 hour bus journey to Puerto Madryn, apparently Argentina is a pretty long place, I used to think Leicester to London was a mission.
Arriving at our new destination we went on an excursion to see the second largest penquin colony in the world after those in Antartica. Not knowing what to expect (other than lots of penquins), I imagined a similar scene to that of March of the Penquins where they´d all be huddling together on the beach front. But how wrong I was. We turned up after a 2 or so hour minibus journey and walked along a marked out path in a national reserve called Punto Tombo. The landscape was baron, but there was definately no shortage of penquins! We didn´t realise this at first and saw one little penquin sheltering in a bush so we took about 100 photos of him. Then we walked another 200 metres and couldn´t see any 10 square metre bit of ground without a penquin in it.....and they weren´t shy either, waddling around by your feet, turning their head left to right to get a better view of you (as their eyesight range isn´t that good so they move their head to see better which is pretty funny). Here´s a guy that was about a metre away from us chilling out.
Told you there were loads, some of the penquins finding shelter in bushes, some chilling out on their bellies (as I would if I were a penquin) but most were in big packs or whatever the penquin collective is called (which unofficially is called a ´waddle´amusingly). Some of the penquins were outcast from the group though and sometimes you´d see one try to infiltrate only to be pecked and chased by the others, pretty harsh. Give a penquin a break dammit.
With all these penquins about what else were we gonna do but to take comedy photos of the little chaps. Here Jen is clearly actually kissing the penquin which is only a few inches big.
Amongst the penquins there were some little rodent type things that were really quick, we did get a photo but they didn´t make it into the blog. However this relative of the lama did. Dude.......sweet. However shortly after this photo, and clearly knowing we were watching, he took a massive poo pretty much on that spot. Joy.
With that poo marking the time to leave we jumped on the minibus and back to the hostel via a ´welsh´ village.
The next day we were keen to go to Peninsula Valdes which is another nature reserve teeming with wildlife. Having been driven 2 hours from our hostel we got there only to be told that the dirt tracks were closed in the peninsula as it had been raining too much in the last couple of days. We waited at the gate as the tour giude was convinced we could put pressure on the ´reserve police´ when other minibuses turned up. We were given the option of going half way into the reserve and hoping that they open it later for us to go through but it would mean paying for the entrance and tour. After a short conflab on the bus it turned out that 6 people wanted to go back and 6 wanted to stay (we wanted to stay) but we all had to go back if more than half wanted to. So off we set back to Puerto Madryn. Arriving back at our hostel, with 5 others who were on the trip, we got the landlord to book us into a boat trip so as not to waste the day. This was only round the corner so we suited up in the old life jackets and did the obligatory sumo bump.
We were told that we might see dolphins and sea lions and maybe even orcas if we were really lucky. Feeling a little deflated that we might not see anything after an ordeal of a day, we set off on the boat. We sure were glad we did....literally within minutes we bumped into a pod of dolphins (yeah i´m down with my group of animal names now). There´s something both amazing but also quite mysterious about an experience like this. The dolphins are really inquisitive and playful and were swimming around us for quite some time, swimming under the boat, spirting out water next to us, generally playing about.
The longer we watched the more playful they seemed to get and started doing as you see in the movies or if you´ve been to seaworld in America or something similar. They started doing tricks 10 or so metres out. I almost caught this guy fully flipping out the water but missed it slightly!
I did manage to catch this chap though after a flip even though it looks like hes just flying!
Finally done with the dolphins we went off to an area where it was known that a sea lion colony often chilled out, and that is exactly what we got. Check them all out soaking in the sun here, with some birds getting in on the action too.
Having seen the not so active or interesting sea lions we headed back to the pier to disembark only to be surprised to see more sea lions chilling out on the actual pier. These lazy chaps must have got on there hours before as the tide had dropped by about 4 metres over 7 hours, and the only way they could have got up there was about 7 hours ago, meaning they´d been chilling out there since then. I like their style.
With that cheeky little surprise at the end of the boat trip, we went back to the hostel and had a few drinks, which inevitably turned into drinking games! The bar was pretty relaxed with us all standing behing it for warmth (as it was outside) and chatting away).
And why not make a fire in a metal barrel thingy to keep us all warm. Why not I say. We planned to go out with the hostel staff after their shift at midnight, but we ended up playing drinking games in the communal area til 3am and decided to call it a night. Some did go on to a club and got back at 7am, good call not to go as it ended up being an electro club, not sure why they love it so much out here. waking at 9am, we were surprised to see Cyrille (in blue here) up at the same time after getting back 2 hours earlier, looking rough as! He blamed me for getting him drunk with the drinking games.....should have been better at them eh Cyrille. It would turn out that Cyrille would come with us for the next week or so to other places for some treks but this was our first encounter.
The next morning we checked out and asked the landlord Garson (who was sound) if there was somewhere we could leave our bags as our bus wasn´t for a few hours. I temporarily forgot I wasn´t in the sarcastic wit based comedy themed England and as he responded to my question about the bags with
´yes, do you know where the front door is´ (about to use that to direct me to the luggage room).....
I responded with, ´Yes Garson, I walk though it everyday´
Funnily enough he found that funny and we had a laugh about it, which was great because on reflection it sounded super patronising.
I managed to convince Jen to jump on a later bus so that I could watch England in the final game of the six nations for the grandslam. Great decision that was!
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