Hotel Libertador Trelew

... to town. My next stop was Trelew, famous for its paleontological museum. Argentina, and the Patagonian coast in particular, are treasure troves of fossils, although many of the best examples have been shipped abroad. The town has suffered an economic decline in recent years, and it shows. People are heading North to find jobs and better weather, or West to the lush valleys nearer the Andes. I also had a chance to visit the small but beautiful town of Gaiman, and spent an ...

... me. By the way, is this place sounding weird to you yet? Multitudes of dinosaur fossils, extinct Welsh immigrants, excessive ham, whale, sea lion, and penguin colonies, and crazy strong winds.. I forgot to mention the wind down here. Skinny folks could easily get blown off a cliff, and it´s only going to get stronger the further south we go. Good excuse for me to keep eating all these good pastries. Seems like we only came here for the dinosaur bones

... stayed there longer, but Tierra del Fuego is getting less Fuego-y as autumn passes down here so we had to head off. We got a nice swanky bus to head south - in 1st class theres champagne n stuff and totally flat beds!. We, hardy travellers that we are, were ...

The longest trip yet awaits us today...20 hours bus ride from Trelew to Buenos Aires. Its over 1,500 kilometres, and although the roads are paved they are slow with lorries, etc. The bus is "semi-bed" which is quite comfortable and we have organised ourselves with sleeping bags, food, etc... Off we go at 2.30pm today and arrive around 10.30 am in Buenos Aires. We attach a few photographs of a magnificent wall painting which we bumped into. Its ...

... gekomen zijn, wij gaan naar de Orca´s! Langzaam wordt duidelijk dat het geen walvissen maand is, dus die zien we in iedergeval niet. Jammer, ok de Orca´s dan. Bovendien veel gevaarlijker, de walvis is een veganist puur sang en houdt het enkel bij het naar binnen slurpen van wat plankton. Een Orca kan met een spectaculaire duik richting strand in een keer een gehele zeeleeuw van wel 3 meter naar binnen werken, en dat willen we zien ...

... en anders pas weer 4 dagen later. Tsja, en toen hadden we een probleempje, want om nou 4 dagen in zo´n gat te zitten, dat zagen we toch echt niet zitten. En na 2 dagen waren we hier echt wel uitgewandeld, zo fanatiek zijn we ook weer niet, ahum.. De volgende ochtend stonden we (zonder ook maar één wandeling gemaakt te hebben, erg!!) om 5u15 op de bus te wachten richting Piedra Bueno. Een plaatsje dat niet eens op de kaart ...

Chubut capitalFrom the beach we travelled slightly inland to Rawson and Trelew, two well groomed small cities less than 20 kilometers apart. Rawson being the capital of the province Chubut, with all the government buildings, while Trelew is more of a commercial center. We found camping off the highway, between the two cities, a convenient spot for visiting both places, and the surrounding area, which includes Peninsula Valdez, a short ...

... better seats than the last time, but the anxiety from our last experience still surfaced quite quickly. We crawled into the tiny seats and picked up the rest of the the people for the tour before heading towards Punto Tombo. We were told by our guide that we would be stopping at the dolphin watching expedition first. I have seen dolphins in the wild before, but we were told that these dolphins (Commerson Dolphins) were specific to only this area of the world. Both Siobhan and I were ...

Trelew is the largest town in the Chubut valley and has some 90,000 inhabitants. Its only a 1 hour from Puerto Madryn but stepping off the bus feels like entering a new area. Unlike the dry and arrid landscapes of Puerto Madryn, Trelew is irrigated by the Rio Chubut. Its warm and sunny and I can understand how after the Welsh arrived in Puerto Madryn they soon moved down to the lush and green valley to make this place home. There is still lots of evidence ...

... to snack on seals - There's a cold current that circles the Antartic, created by the rotation of the earth and the wind. Which hooks up quite nicely with what we learnt in Australia: the route from the UK to Melbourne was down to Antartica then use this current and wind (the roaring 50's, named after the latitude) to whip around the bottom of the earth... - Orca females live for 60 years, have babies every 10 years, and the males only live ...