Puerto Madryn & The Valdez Penninsular

We drove for 19 hours (1085km) to get to Puerto Madryn and make up our missed day due to the mechanics not bolting the wheels of the truck on properly. This town is our main stop off point for visiting Patagonia and the Valdez Penninsular. The countryside here is very sparse and boring. There are thousands and thousands of acres of just nothing except sandy bushes, so we played poker on the truck to while away the hours. After a late meal when we arrived at the campsite, we went to bed early.

Puerto Madryn is one of 3 towns in this area which have Welsh names. The town itself was founded by Welsh colonists and it was funny seeing the red dragon proudly displayed at on monuments and buildings.

The next day we went to the Valdez Penninsular, which has exactly the same scenery apart from a few colonies of sea lions, penguins, elephant seals and killer whales. This is the actual place where the BBCs Planet Earth filmed the amazing footage of a killer whale coming up onto the shore to catch the baby seals.

The weather was cold and misty, but the penguins were cool (but unbelievably smelly) and we could only just about see the seals through the mist. The best thing for me though, was the armadillos running around the car park. They dont seem to mind being touched by tourists and I had some bread, which I fed to them. We had been dying to see "molitas" since we failed to see one in Carlos Pellegrini and now we could poke and play with them, which was really cool. We didnt see any killer whales.

In the evening we went out for Rikkis birthday (again) and got very drunk. We did see a big shooting star while stumbling back to the campsite, which was nice. Shorty made a wish to see another shooting star, which she did see the next night, and that made her happy. My wish was to see more monkeys, but that request has yet to come to fruition.