Apart Hotel Ty Coed Puerto Madryn

For the third time in a row we arrived to our next stop in the tipping rain, and for the third time in a row I almost throw a tantrum...almost! Luckily for Al the first hostal we go to has space and calm is soon restored. Puerto Madryn is a port town on the east coast of Argentina and just about in to Patagonia. It is where the Welsh came to settle in 1850ish, and we could see why...rain, tick; sea, tick; sheep, tick and hills, tick. After finding a place for steak for ...

... day, not a cloud in the sky and definitely shorts and t shirt weather. We headed to Peninsular Valdez and straight for the whales which we were really glad about as 2 days before the weather had been so bad no boats were allowed out, and the weather seemed very changable so it was nice to be making the most of the sunshine.

The boat headed pretty far out.. we were all desperately scanning the water and jumping up at every false alarm. The boat driver seemed pretty ...

Puerto Madryn is the base camp for Peninsula Valdes, home to Sealions, Orcas and Whales. More importantly it also neighbours Trelew, the large town settled by Welsh immigrants including, perhaps, a distant relative of mine.


Within 5 minutes of arriving at our hostel (run by Gaston, a crazee Argentinian who gave us ill advice about the weather and car rental agencies) we ...

... morgen saetter vi kursen mod El Calafate.. En lidt laengere tur end vi havde forventet, da vi ikke kan tage en direkte bus, saa ender vist med endnu en natbus og en samlet tur paa ca halvandet doegn! Men kan slet ikke vente til trekkingtur og at gaa paa en gletscher..

... animals!
Early start on Wednesday, well early for us nowadays, 8am at the dive shop:) Out on the boat by 0900 and in the water by 0930. Spent a good 50 minutes in the water with about 30 sealions, about 10 or 15 at a time, one of the best things I have done for sure. Ang was there too and it was ruddy freezing, even with double layer wetsuits on it was cold, about 10 degrees I think. The sealions were really inquisitive, coming ...

... for drugs - cocaine to be exact. 15kgs of it! Long story short, it belonged to the woman sitting behind me and she was promptly removed from the bus by several policemen and questioned for 6 hours! We know this because the bus had to stay there the whole time as the drivers are apparently 'witnesses' and the bus is 'evidence'. Evebntually we got going again, but the saddest part was that the drug dealer-ette was ...

We made it to Argentina after a 28 hour bus journey. Reckon that was the longest one yet. We both coped with it OK though despite Helen having a bad cold. We have been staying here in Puerto Madryn as it is central to two places we wanted to visit. Puerto Madryn was the place where the fist of the welsh settlers landed back in the early 1800s. They established a farming community 60km inland from hear called Gaiman. On Tuesday we caught the bus ...

... Death sentence it was called, so donīt go see that...:P Then today I had a 7.45 pick up for my excursion to the Peninsula Valdes! It was good, but tiring:D A lot of driving around to get everywhere, as the peninsula is HUGE! So first of all, we went to see the sea lions! And there were masses and masses of them! Little seelions hopping around the place and the coastline was just overwhelmed by them:) All right, maybe Iīm embellishing it a little bit, but that was my ...

... and nuts - this, I have noticed, is available at all good supermarkets in the region for close to 5 quid!! Gaiman itself was disappointing. There were some old Welsh style houses but these were few and far between. There is a museum here (in the old train station), the lady here said that the Welsh was still spoken by a few and it is taught in schools and could be studied to a higher level in Trelew. She herself was taking classes, they ...

... Aires.

At Sea Wednesday 24th January 2007

Throughout the night we continued our direct southwesterly course towards Argentina, passing off the major port of Santos around 0300. Santos serves as the port for Sao Paul, and as a result is one of Brazil's busiest ports. Our position at noon was 27° 37.5 south and 046° 37.3
west. For the remainder of the day we continued on this course, paralleling the Brazilian coastline at a distance of around 60 ...