So many animals

It’s been a struggle to post lately, the WiFi in the hotel in Trelew broke and we’ve been travelling a bit. Thankfully now I have a few spare moments in Las Grutas to catch up.
Our trip to Patagonia has been great so far. We started in Trelew after the fabulous 20 hour bus trip. The actual town isn’t that interesting, although fairly quaint. We had two full days of excursions planned.

The first took us to Punta Tumba to see the penguins who had recently arrived to look after their new laid eggs. There were thousands, 200 000 to be exact. After that we drove back to Trelew and then on to one of the original Welsh settlements for Welsh tea. It was a pleasant day.
Day two was longer, we went to Peninsula Valdes. It was quite a long drive. There we visited the tiny town of Puerto Piramide and took a boat out into the bay. We were virtually surrounded by whales. So many of them, all quite curious and friendly, swimming right up alongside the boat. It was quite breathtaking at times.

Then another long drive to Caleta Valdes to look at the sea elephants, fat lumpy things that just lie about the place. Again, there were seemingly thousands of them.

It was a great two days and very well organized tours. We had the same tour guide and driver both days. She was terribly sweet and had the funniest turn of phrase, I guess learning English later in life will do that. My favourite was her talking about the top layer of a Welsh wedding cake being able to “maintain itself” for a year before going off. I like the idea of a cake maintaining itself! The pieces about the Welsh settlements were fascinating and very strange at the same time. It seems remarkable to think of 152 Welsh folk just leaving Wales and heading to the end of the earth at the turn of the century, almost guaranteed never to return.

We’ve only scratched the surface, but Patagonia is huge. Endless shrubbery and flat flat flat landscapes. It’s remarkable.