Hotel Carrera Puerto Madryn

... up and down the coast in the cold. More whale watching and they are everywhere!! 1000s are out in the water at this time of year. Farther up the coast we see a flock of flamingos. Big pink birds covering the sky. Glorious! What a way to send us off. From there we gather all our gear and on the bus we go. 18 hours to Buenos Aires. The beach has been sweet. Iḿ ready for some snow. Its getting closer.....

... Park done and we were off to the boat yard for our sea trip. We turned up with our patches, wooden legs and parrots at the ready...but we had to swap them for orange life jackets. Jack Sparrow, Captain Hook and some other porate I havent got the name, we were not.
Our English speaking seaman (assume yout own jokes) was named Orlando (another Orlando...surely not the last either?) and he was very informative. The first thing he informed us of was the indtructions, which Gary ...

... an hour too early! Then, it hit me, about the time change. I chugged the beer down, and lugged my stuff out to the platform, and sure enough, it was mine! Was I lucky! Well, the bus went all nite, and we finally arrived at Pto. Madryn about noon. Onward and upward!

... very strange. It was not as if every one there was speaking Welsh but some local people know welsh but predominantly speak Spanish. It was great to sit down and have a decent brew with lots of lovely cakes including Welsh Cakes. It was like being back at home even if the Welsh cakes were not as good as Mothers. The next day we visited a National coastal reserve Peninsular Valdes. We went on a guided tour to see Sea lions, Penguins, Elephant ...

... it would end up being another 50 person huge group, and when we got picked up in a car and started driving out of town we thought we must be meeting up with the rest of the group a bit later. Well it turned out that we were the only ones ! Private tour, now I didn't think we had enough money for this kind of treatment (and considering we ...

... and pizza. There were cakes mentioned but not a cabinet full as I had been expecting. I enquired as to whether they had Welsh cakes and was assured they did. After we had both ordered I sat back with great expectations. However, despite our very basic Spanish we both clearly heard the owner on the phone request welsh cake from somewhere else, and sure enough a girl from another tea house appeared with two small plates with thin slices of ...

... line (and I just barely could). But we really did like the room I guess, it opened up right out into the garden. The next night we moved into a double room. Just a little bigger but we both could fully stretch out on a very comfortable bed and we are on the second floor with a great view of the garden and moon. We had hopes of going to the beach today but this morning it has been raining - I guess that's a good thing - so I can update this blog! When we first walked ...

... more like small house or chapels, and house all the members (dead ones) of that family. Each tomb seems to be more jaw dropping that the other, and each are housed upon avenues that criss cross for as far as the eye can see. Eva Peron is buried in her family tomb, so donīt go expecting to find the Peron tomb, is buried under her maiden name Duarte and tucked away along a side street (seriously it is like a small town). Even if she were not there, it is ...

... paar Ausnahmen traege in der Sonne am Strand herum und geniessen das herrliche Wetter. Unser naechster Stopp sind die magellanischen Pinguine. Die sind nur etwa 45cm klein und wirklich niedlich. Ein paar sind auch nur etwa 2m von uns entfernt und sogar ein Babypinguin schaut aus einem Erdloch zu uns heraus, die Papa gebaut hat. Sie stoeren sich ueberhaupt nicht an den menschlichen Besuchern und so koennen wir ein paar nette Bilder machen. Es geht zum letzten Stopp, den ...

... our first penguin, he was kind of off in the distance and we all had our cameras out and were taking pictures. Some rangers were laughing at us and told us to keep on walking, we would see more. Se we walked along and all of a sudden there were penguins EVERYWHERE. Over 500,000. THey are walking on the path, sitting under trees in their little burrows, playing together, giving little eskimo kisses with their beaks, sitting on their eggs, feeding their ...