We flew from Iguazu to Trelew. Just so you can get a better understanding of how much of Argentina we covered, let me explain that Iguazu Falls is at the northern edge of Argentina. Buenos Aires is in the middle, by the Atlantic Ocean. Trelew, Puerto Madryn -- all of which are part of Patagonia -- are south of Buenos Aires.
We were expecting Patagonia to be cold, but it was rather warm. I had no need to use my wool jacket. We explored the northern part of Patagonia -- Peninsula Valdes. We had a private tour guide, who spoke English, because my Spanish is limited to hola, adios, buenos dias, and gracias.
We stayed at Puerto Madryn, a city of 70,000, which was a town right by the ocean. All the other cities there were rather small and did not appear to have tourist accommodations like hotels. Anyway, the first day, we got to see elephant seals and sea lions. On our drive there, we saw animals indigenous to Patagonia such as guanacos (a type of llama), a male choique with lots of chick choiques (a grey, flightless bird), mara (big jackrabbit/small fox), and sheep. I couldn't really take good pictures because my camera's zoom function is well, pretty pitiful.
I thought the landscape of Peninsula Valdes reminded me of California's landscape by I-5. Lots of low brushes. Our tour guide told us that getting fresh water is a big problem because it doesn't rain that much there. So they have rations during some parts of the year -- unable to wash cars or water gardens. Although this year, apparently they already had 500 ml of rain (normally they would've gotten 300 ml of rain). It was quite beautiful to see the elephant seals and a sea lion sleeping by the ocean. They didn't move much... they were pretty lazy. They just slept!
We went to see the Magellan Penguins at Punta Tomba the next day. It's the area for the largest reserve of these penguins. At this time, there are 200,000 penguins because it's mating season. In a month or so, when the eggs hatch, there will be approximately a million penguins. Apparently, these penguins mate for life. Every year, they come back to the same nest and to the same mate. They lay 2 eggs but the survival rate is 50%. Every 2-3 days, the penguins trade places -- one penguin feeds in the ocean, and the other lay on top of the eggs. Both male and female penguins have little parting in their belly to keep eggs closer to their bodies. Supposedly, they keep the eggs at a constant temperature of 27 degree celsius. The stronger male penguins will fight to nest near the ocean, and weaker male penguins end up nesting farther away in the field.
It was great to see the penguins in their nests and so close, but at the same time, I felt a little weird intruding in their little homes. There were lots of penguins nesting right by the trail we took, so I was able to see them pretty closely.
We then went to Gaiman, a little Welsh town in Argentina. We had high tea at a little tea house in that town. Princess Diana had tea there in 1995, and there were pictures everywhere in that little place of Princess Diana. The tea was good, and we were stuffed with sweet cakes.
Our last stop was at a paleontology museum. We saw bunch of dinasour bones, and even got to take a picture to see how big they actually were.
We had a lot of fun touring Peninsula Valdes. Our tour guide, Marco, was helpful and explained quite a bit. We, then, took off for Buenos Aires again before flying back to the United States.
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