Quick Update-Lots of Moving!

Hello! Working on more detailed posts with pictures. Here’s a quick update of where we’ve been the past few days and where we’re headed.

Goodbye to BA–For Now

All roads, and flights apparently, run through Buenos Aires. We left Tigre/Nordelta on Sunday, 27-Feb and spent one more night in our home away from home, Hotel Magnolia in the Palermo neighborhood. The staff there was wonderful with trip planning and helped us so much. I have no doubt we’ll be staying there again.

Hello Chubut and Patagonia!

From there, we caught a flight out of Buenos Aires to Trelew in Chubut province of Northern Patagonia. We picked up the car that led to the Nordelta detour and headed into Puerto Madryn. Trelew is nothing to write home about, and all the guidebooks said don’t bother to stay there. From what we’ve seen, they were dead on.

Puerto Madryn

Puerto Madryn is a full on vacation beach community and the best access to Peninsula Valdes, which has several colonies of elephant seals, sea lions, orcas, and Magellanic penguins. The peninsula is also home to the tiny beach community of Piramides. We spent two days in the Peninsula Valdes circumnavigating the coast on dirt roads. We have some unbelievable pictures to share. It was an amazing experience.

Gaiman

After 3 nights in Puerto Madryn, we headed to Gaiman, which is where we are now. We arrived in tiny sleepy Gaiman about 2pm and there was not a business open or even people on the streets. It was kind of surreal. We again had that “where are we?” feeling.

Gaiman is a Welsh, yes Welsh, village with Welsh tea houses and everything. We’ll be taking tea tomorrow. Today, we drove 2 1/2 hours to Punta Tombo to see the largest Megellanic penguin colony on the South American continent. Estimates are 400,000 birds. We didn’t see that many, but we’ll share the pictures and videos of the ones we did see in a future post. Hopefully, we’ll have some down time this weekend. We’re in Gaiman until Sunday, 6-Mar, and there isn’t much to do! We’ll tour the town and maybe head to one of the beach communities outside Trelew.

Moving South

Our path South actually takes us back North for lack of direct flights. On Tuesday, 8-Mar, we’re flying back to BA, catching a cab across town to another airport, and then catching another flight back South to El Calafate. Sounds crazy, but it was the alternative to a 30-hour bus ride. They say the buses are comfortable, but NOT GONNA DO IT! Down south is where we’ll be in the mountains, colder temperatures, and among the glaciers. Can’t wait!! We met an Israeli today who had just been there. He was actually the first English-speaking tourist we’ve seen since BA. He heard English and immediately started up a conversation. We spent the afternoon chatting with him and gazing and penguins.

From El Calafate, we’ll head to El Chaltén, yes by bus. Best way there and more reasonable travel time. More glaciers and stuff to see there. We have a room there through 15-Mar. That is where our current plans end. We’re going to wait and see what we discover down South before making other plans.

There is a direct flight from El Calafate to Ushuaia, likely our furthest destination to the South and probably where we’ll end up. We were hoping to catch a 4-day ferry around the bottom of South America from Argentina into Chili, but it isn’t running past 17-Mar this year and is fully booked. We’re very disappointed but will adjust our plans and make sure we get on a boat somewhere in Ushuaia.

Swear we’ll process and share some more photos. Lunch is always around 3pm and there’s not much to do until dinner at 9pm, which is why I’m posting now. We tend to fill the time with naps, cards, beer, etc. That’s it for the moment. I’m thinking we may need to go find beer, which has been abundant and amazing here. That’s also another post!

Jake