17 hours on a bus to get here - not bad at all! They give you dinner (but I was asleep) and then packaged snacks: one alfajor and one tostado dulce (sweet toast). A traditional alfajor consists of dulce de leche sandwiched between two cookies that is then dipped in chocolate. It sounds good.... but it's not. I even bought the best alfajor brand to try: Havanna. I'm just not impressed. Basically, the only time I eat them is when we get them on bus rides and I wont be getting food for another ten hours.
I ended up spending four nights in Puerto Madryn when I only intended one at first. There were no buses down to Ushuaia so I couldn't leave for a few days. It's actually a good thing because they've been protesting in Chile and people were stuck further down south for 5 days! I also heard they took some Dutch tourists hostage, but I'm not sure that that's true. Gas prices have risen 300% or something and people are mad! So, in case you guys are getting bad news about shenanigans in South America: I haven't been taken hostage in Chile. I was not struck my lightning in Buenos Aires (I think three people were recently?), and I was nowhere near the flooding in Rio.
So Puerto Madryn. It's supposed to be the dive capital of South America but everyone I've talked to has been disappointed with the diving. I was too. We went down about 25m to see a ship wreck. The water was freezing, the visibility was poor, and we were only down for about 25 minutes. We didn't even get to go inside the ship because it was really dark down there. I Did get to see swarms (?) of what I can only describe as little lobsters - about half the size of my pinky. There were thousands of them about 2-3 meters deep that would surround us and swim in our faces.
But the highlight of my ocean adventures was getting either kissed or headbutted by a sea lion. I signed up to do a snorkel-with-the-sea-lions tour that wasn't the most amazing thing ever, but really cool to do. I think I'm a little jaded because the first day, we took an hour boat ride to the sea lion colony, got into the freezing water, and then weather conditions were too dangerous for us to do anything. So they got us back into the boat and we sat there freezing for an hour... fingers and toes numb, and constant, hard spray from the ocean because it was so choppy. I haven't been that miserable in a long time... But the next day, the weather was fantastic and actually swimming with the sea lions was cool! 2-4 would come around us at any given moment and bite us (didn't hurt) or just swim around and play. I had my face in the water at one point though and a sea lion came up to me, hesitated for a second, and bam! Kiss or headbutt? Not sure :)
One of the big reasons to visit Puerto Madryn is for the nearby opportunities to see animals. Unfortunately, it's not whale season which is one of the biggest draws. We even waited around two hours to see orcas snatch baby sea lions, but no luck. I guess Willy wasn't free today. It was really sad though, there were two dead baby sea lions and birds were feeding on them - the sea lions just let them! :( Because people I had talked to were disappointed with the tours, I ended up renting a car with some new friends and spent about 12 hours driving around Peninsula Valdes. We saw unidentifiable birds, penguins, sea lions, elephant seals, cows, horses, llamas, sheep (ugly when shaved) and an armadillo! All day I wanted to see the armadillo and I even called to it in Spanish. Then randomly, one was crossing the road and stopped in front of my window for a picture. What a nice armadillo. They are surprisngly small, only about the size of a large guinea pig. Toninas are a type of dolphin that I think is only found in the Patagonian waters... I didn't see any there but I saw three while crossing the Strait of Magellan.
I really liked Puerto Madryn. I felt good when I was there and not really stressed at all. Cars actually stop for pedestrians here if that's any indication (this is pretty much unheard of in Argentina). I met a lot of cool people in my hostel and while sea lioning and now I have friends to visit in Europe!
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