Puerto Madryn
Trip Start
Feb 10, 2006
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3
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Trip End
Feb 01, 2007
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Puerto Madryn,
Argentina
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Puerto Madryn is a beautiful and busy little seaside town. We´ve managed to find a friendly campsite near the town which appears to double as a car park - rock hard gravel beneath us and a thick layer of dust coating the tent. The big attraction here are the Southern Right Whales which head in close to the shore each year to cavort in the waves and soak the boatloads of camera wielding tourists. Then there´s the penguins and the sea lions and ...Well the idea was to spend a few days watching these magnificent creatures but our timing ain´t so hot and they´ve all swum off for the summer so we´ll just need to come back at the end of the year. We did meet a few little penguins but they seemed to have lost their way (still young) and were unlikely to make it out of the bay - natural selection it may be but it´s still sad.
So with the whales gone I went in search of the other Wales - the Welsh ones that arrived back in the 1800´s. Turns out one of my distant grandparents arrived here over a hundred years ago, leaving the mines and fields of Wales for the endless plains and pampas of South America. They hoped to hang on to the old ways - the language, the traditions, the dodgy hats, away from the English influences. What a life, most of the original immigrants died as they couldn´t force anything to grow in the barren wastes. The next lot (including my relative) were of farming stock so fared much better. Goodness knows how they did it, there´s so little water around. Found a little museum and was very moved to see photos of the little village in Wales my dad´s side of the family grew up in and to see the map of where my relative lived here in Argentina. Seems like they´re still keeping the traditions alive, they teach Welsh in the schools. Funny to think I have relatives round here.
Back in the town we have also found opportunity to rejoice at the Italian influence - the ice-creams are just out of this world! What´s really cute is how you pick out a teeny tiny cone for about 50 pence and they create this towering, mountain peak of ice-cream on top - lovely.
