On Monday morning we were woken up by the bus conductor announcing very loudly our imminent arrival in Puerto Madryn.. While Suzie was bending over her backpack unzipping her straps, a French tourist patted her on the back to tell her that her cargo pants had a big tear in the backside and her knickers were showing.
It was a short walk to the El Gualicho Hostel – on the way we saw a car drive past with a black and white collie on the roof barking at everyone as it drove by! As we were beside the sea, the weather was milder here so we could change back into t-shirts and sandals.
We went for a walk around town and then along the sea front where we got a couple of quotes for car hire so that we could drive to the Peninsula Valdez and Punta Tombo independently rather than as a group tour with the hostel. We stopped and had paella for lunch at Restaurant Puerto Marisko with beautiful sea views. After lunch we walked along the pier and then went back to get some more car hire quotes only to find that it was siesta time and everyone was closed until at least 4.00 pm. We bought an ice cream and went back to the hostel to eat the rest of the Bariloche chocolate and to have a short rest.
Later, we went out again to finalise our car hire only to find that the offices were still closed or unmanned - even though they were supposed to be open. We managed to find another car hire company who were able to give us a car straight away. We took it back to the hostel and parked it in their secure car park. We spent some time in our room updating our diary and uploading our photos before the hostel's BBQ dinner at 9.00 pm.
We went downstairs at 9.00 pm and we watched the man cooking the meat on a large charcoal grill inside the kitchen – with plenty of salt. Dinner was ready at about 9.30 pm and we sat at a table with 12 other people and chatted over the chorizo, vacio and asado with lettuce and tomato salad and potato and egg salad. It was a good solid feed washed down with magnums of Santa Anna Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon.
We set the alarm for 7.00 am on Tuesday morning and left the hostel after breakfast in our little VW Gol for the Peninsula Valdes. We drove out of town and took a turn off onto the dirt road which followed the Golfo Nuevo. It was a beautiful morning and immediately we were struck by how calm the waters of the gulf were. Similarly to Hervey Bay the whales obviously like the calm water as a nursery. We turned off to El Doradillo beach lookout where we saw a Southern Right Whale immediately below us and others frolicking nearby. We also saw many small rodents called desert cavy skulking around the bushes. We also stopped at Playa Banuls, and Cerro Prismatico off the dirt road and saw more Southern Right Whales and the Elegant Crested Tinamou – like a brown guineafowl. After we reached the sealed road we paid to get into the national park and then stopped at the visitors centre. On display was a Southern Right Whale skeleton, and information panels covering all the flora and fauna in the park and the history of the area. On the drive to Puerto Piramides for our whale watching cruise, we saw the first of many brown guanaco. We saw one jump a fence later in the day in elegant fashion – effortless! The whale cruise didn't have to go far as there were mothers and babies just off shore and all around us. Apparently they feed on krill in the Antarctic and then head up here to breed, but eat nothing while they are here! Some were extremely close to the boat but appeared totally oblivious. We also saw seagulls, sea lions, cormorants, terns, and skuas hanging around the rock shelf that stuck out into the sea. The whole area was a sedimentary rock made from preserved sea bed with fossilised shells, bones and other debris clearly visible. After the cruise we drove to a nearby lookout at Punta Piramides cliffs where we saw more whales and a colony of sea lions below. The lady on the boat had told us that when diving the sea lions used to steal her flippers! We drove on towards another point of the peninsula known as Punta Delgada. On the way we saw some impressive white salt flats, Salina Grande and Salina Chica. At Punta Delgada we saw elephant seals and smaller seals as well as lizards trying to warm up in the Atlantic breeze. The views of the green Southern Atlantic Ocean and the rock shelves were impressive. On our way onto Punta Norte we stopped at Estancia La Elvira for a hot chocolate and saw more elephant seals. There was also a view of Caleta Valdes spit – a long sandbank dividing a channel from the sea. The tide was rushing out but at high tide the orcas often cruise up and down this channel looking for any seals or penguins which might be an easy meal. As we drove parallel to the spit we stopped at a lookout to marvel at the tide force and say hello to some nesting Magellan penguins. On reaching Punta Norte we were lucky enough to see people feeding a tiny hairy armadillo – one of the cutest things you could imagine, running hither and thither desperately searching for the next piece of bread. On finding anything he would rush back to his burrow to eat it in safety before emerging again. This was a much smaller version of the armadillo we had seen in Brazil. We saw more seals, sea lions and elephant seals before heading off on the long drive through dirt roads back to the sealed road to Puerto Madryn. On the way the sun was setting and we saw many guanaco out feeding.
Back at Puerto Madryn, we drove to the Mariscos de Atlantico restaurant. This had been recommended by the hostel and the seafood was supplied by the local fisherman. The food was amazing. We started off with scallops cooked in garlic, followed by lenguado (sole), merluza negra (Patagonian tooth fish) with salad and chips. We washed this down with a delicious bottle of Calafate Malbec 2007. It was a lovely end to a wonderful but tiring day.
We woke up to the alarm again on Wednesday morning and headed South after breakfast. The road was flat and straight through the desert landscape until we reached the turn off to Rawson. We drove to Playa Union where we booked a cruise to see the striking black and white Commersons dolphins. Luckily it was a relatively calm day and the inflatable was pretty stable as we passed through the gap in the sea wall. Not far out we saw the dolphins in pairs and small groups racing towards us and jumping as they came. They liked to play in the waves created by the boat and also seemed to like the noise of the engine. They certainly seemed to follow the boat as it accelerated around. Unfortunately they were so fast and small that they were almost impossible to photograph. After a little while a sea lion appeared and also began following the boat around. Then we spotted two Southern Right Whales heading for Peninsula Valdes and followed them for a short while. At one stage one was right next to the boat – closer than we had been yesterday. We stopped on the way back into the river to say hello to a sea lion family camped on the river bank next to the fishing boats. We drove off desperately looking for somewhere to have lunch as this was the day of the once in a decade census and everything was closed. We ran into an open service station on our way south towards Punta Tombo and had to eat salami, cheese spread and crackers in the car. We saw a rhea and about ten chicks, liebre mara (like a wallaby size rabbit), and guanaco on our way to the penguin colony. At Punto Tombo, we walked along a boardwalk and then a path lined with stones towards the beach. Along the way we could see penguin burrows everywhere and most were occupied. Nesting had begun and eggs were often visible. Most of the penguins appeared to be having siesta but there were some wandering to and from the beach. It was impressive that they were able to dig burrows in the hard ground. There were a few dead bodies around and we saw some broken eggs and a couple of skuas hanging around. There were also many desert cavy and small mice. This is meant to be the largest penguin rookery on the mainland with between 400,000 and 500,000 birds. We had a great time wandering around watching the penguin behaviours and listening to their donkey-like braying. We got close to very tame guanacos on the way back and set off for Puerto Madryn with Suzie behind the wheel. We arrived back safely, returned the car and walked back to Mariscos de Atlantico for dinner. We had hot and cold seafood platters for entree and then paella, and sea trout (trucha) for mains. The entree was a selection of prawns, langoustines, clams, mussels, scallops, squid, octopus, razor clams, and crab. The sea trout was the colour of salmon and tasted even better.
On Thursday we walked 4 kms to the Hepuelche Indian monument on the headland outside town. It was cloudy and breezy walking along the beach but at the top of the headland the wind was fierce and the sand blew into our eyes, nose and ears. On the way back we stopped to get fruit for the bus trip, empanadas for lunch, lemon meringue pie and raspberry flan for dessert. We made a cup of real Dilmah tea at the hostel and enjoyed lunch. We packed up and left El Gualicho hostel for the bus terminal where we hopped on a bus to Rio Gallegos en route to El Calafete having thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Puerto Madryn.
The bus attendant was really friendly and allowed Keith to choose a movie from his collection. We had a laugh because he thought that we wanted to show him our collection of movies – when we wanted to see his collection of movies. The other passengers on the bus were really friendly to us because they could see we were trying to speak Spanish. We had our dinner early – at 8.30 pm instead of the usual 10.30 pm and tried to go to sleep after the movie was over.
The bus seemed to stop several times during the night to pick up and drop off passengers, and it was cold which made it difficult to sleep. We arrived at Rio Gallegos' tiny bus station at 9.15 am on Friday morning only to find that the earliest bus to El Calafate left at 1.00 pm. We managed to jump on a bus that was heading to Centro and got off at the main street. All the headlines in the newspapers were about the death of the ex-president Nestor Kirchner. We walked to the Plaza San Martin and then walked back to the bus station. We stopped in at the Carrefour to buy a couple of ham and cheese baguettes, a salami and cheese baguette and grapefruit juice for lunch. We ate our lunch at the bus station and the baguettes were awful. On closer inspection the packaging said "para tostado" – which probably explained it. Our bus to El Calafate turned out to be a 16 seater minibus. As we drove out of town, we noticed trucks and buses parked out by the roadside sporting Argentine flags with a black stripe though them as a mark of respect to Nestor Kirchner. Even though he was the ex president and had died two days ago everyone seemed to be having a day off – any excuse for a holiday! The views from the bus were the vast barren spaces of Patagonia with a green tinge and some yellow flowers along the road but we did see some rhea, ducks, geese and rabbits. Even though we were now getting quite remote there were always plastic bags visible from the road, lying on the ground, caught on fences and bushes and blowing in the wind. We arrived at El Calafate at 4.30 pm and then walked through town to the America del Sur Hostel. We had a lovely shower, signed up for the BBQ dinner, and booked a day trip to the Glacier for tomorrow. The BBQ started at 9.00 pm. It was really great because there was good selection of salads and vegetables as well beef, chicken and sausage. The meat was really good quality and cooked to perfection. Everybody really enjoyed the meal and we had fun chatting to Fran, Barry and Colin from Ireland over dinner. Ben from NZ told us how his friends had got more than they bargained for with adventure travel. His friend had ripped open his foot quad biking and had to have it operated on and then go home. We told him about the guy in Bariloche who was caught by a gust of wind while paragliding and hit some rocks, losing some teeth and getting pretty badly smashed up. One of Ben's other friends didn't bother getting the yellow fever vaccination but then discovered that he couldn't get back into NZ so had it administered in La Paz. Unfortunately he was on an overnight bus when he started having convulsions and went into a coma. His friends took him to the nearest hospital four hours away and he spent a week recovering! While they were at the hospital a tourist came in who had had a scooter accident with a stick going through his eye. In a few hours his travel insurance had organised to airlift him out of the country for medical treatment but basically he was going to lose his eye. If you leave 500 prisoners on an island for 200 years what is the first thing you hear when you visit the island? G'day mate, wanna beer? (NZ joke).
We set the alarm for 7.00 am on Saturday so that we could have breakfast before being collected for our guided tour of the Perito Moreno Glacier. We were the first to be collected at 8.00 and the bus topped twice to pick up more passengers before heading out to the glacier – about 80 kms away. On the way to the Los Glaciares National Park, we drove past flat, sparsely-vegetated plains. The guide told us that these were Estancias (farms) and the vegetation had been destroyed by over-grazing. As we got closer to the glacier, the scenery changed dramatically from the sparse plains to forested hills and milky green lakes. We saw lots of the thorny Calafate bush (from which El Calafate gets its name) with yellow flowers and the Chilean Fire-bush with its pretty red flowers. We took a one hour catamaran cruise across the milky waters of the lake that took us close to the southern face of the glacier. It was a really beautiful sunny day and our first views of the ice pack were stunning. The glacier Perito Moreno snaked out of the mountains in the background and spread out before marching into the lake. The ice front looked just like meringue with quiffs and small peaks at all angles on the top. The ice was various shades of blue and we could hear thunderous cracking as pieces broke off and fell into the waters. After our boat ride, we were driven to the Visitors Centre where there were a series of metal boardwalks and stone balconies that allowed us to see the glacier from above –a different perspective from the boat. We had our lovely BBQ sandwich lunch in front of the glacier and then spent the next couple of hours walking along the boardwalks admiring the north, east and south faces of the glacier. As the day warmed up, we were mesmerised by the spectacle of large pieces of ice breaking off the glacier and plunging into the lake creating enormous splashes and waves. The glacier bridged the lake with only a small tunnel allowing the lake to drain from one side to another as the river filled up the southern lake. This was periodically sealed off by the ice so that the water levels rose and pressure built up until the ice collapsed and the water channel was re-established. This happened approximately every two years.
We drove back to El Calafate stopping to take some photos at the viewpoint we passed earlier in the day.
At El Calafate, we bought bus tickets for our onwards journeys to El Chalten and Puerto Natales (in Chile) then spent a pleasant hour wandering along the main street window shopping and tasting chocolate from the various "artesan" chocolate shops.
It was almost 9.30 pm before we went to Viva La Pepa to have crepes for dinner.
We woke up to the alarm again on Sunday morning, had breakfast and carried our packs to the bus station to catch our bus to El Chalten, a tiny village in the northern part of the Los Glaciares National Park. The buff-faced ibises screeched in the trees outside the bus station. The driver played Argentine folk music as we cruised through the barren emptiness of the Patagonian steppes, covered in its olive stubble of low shrub. We saw rabbits by the roadside and skeletons of guanaco. There were a few stony fast-flowing brownish rivers as the snow must be melting fast now in the warming weather. Towards El Chalten, ranges of mountains appeared and on the hills we saw herds of guanaco. There were lakes with flamingo and pairs of geese, and as the mountains got closer we saw glaciers emerging and feeding the lakes and a pair of condors floating high above. We arrived at the Visitor Centre just outside town where a ranger gave us a firm talk about not leaving any rubbish and told us the park was free. Then we stayed on the bus to be dropped at Rancho Grande hostel on the other side of town. Unfortunately they were full so Suzie waited with the backpacks and Keith scouted around for somewhere else to stay. We hadn't booked as we didn't think it would be very busy as El Chalten was quite remote, however our big bus from Calafate was totally full. Luckily we found a lodge with a beautiful room and a modern bathroom for AR$220 (approximately $58AUD). Argentina really isn't that expensive. Then we headed off on the Laguna Capri walk with views of Mt Fitz Roy, recommended by the ranger if you were only staying for a short time. It was just over an hour walking through the beech forest with great views down the valley with the river below, and a spiky bush coming into bright red flower in some places. There was much evidence of the famous red helmeted woodpecker, with many trees having fresh holes drilled by the woodpeckers searching for grubs in the tree trunks. At the Mirador (lookout) we saw the Fitz Roy peak with its series of pink granite towers reaching into the sky with the cloud swirling around the tops so that the view was constantly changing. We walked a little further to the Laguna Capri to get the picture postcard view of the towers and Piedras Blancas glacier over the lake and walked home. The wind increased markedly over the afternoon and we could feel that the weather here was unstable and changeable. We got back and stopped at Nipo Nino for a couple of delicious empanadas. We walked around town to get a feel for El Chalten which seemed to be growing at a fantastic rate with new buildings on every corner. The town had only been established in 1985 on land donated by the national park. There were restaurants, tourist shops, travel agencies and small hotels everywhere. We bought a couple of apples and some sweets for trekking tomorrow and stopped at the tourist information to check what treks were recommended. Then we walked back to Nipo Nino for another couple of fresh empanadas and some home-made pasta. It was really delicious and we left feeling very full. Back at the lodge we had a shower and relaxed in our big room.
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