So remember that time I went to Puerto Madryn?

So I'm going to try to backtrack a little and update about my travel adventures.
Two weekends ago (Oct 11/12-16) I went down south to Patagonia to Puerto Madryn. It was AMAZING. Definitely my best trip here.

It started out a bit rough. Michelle, Sarah, and I missed our bus. The 18-hour bus to Puerto Madryn. I had left late, Sarah had left with plenty of time, but not enough for the traffic, and Michelle was there early but didn't see the bus (and Sarah had our tickets...). When we asked where it should be (they give you a range, not a specific place for the bus), they said it had left a minute or two earlier, but that we should take a taxi to the station on the other side of the city. We ran through the station and hopped in a cab but, unfortunately, met the slowest, least aggressive taxi driver Buenos Aires has ever know. When we realized we'd never make it in time we just went back to my house. "Suprise, Elvira! We're back!"

We spent a few hours making phone calls and looking online, but most places had closed at that point. We found a few possibilities and decided we'd make the final arrangements in the morning. We went out to dinner to relax a bit, but first stopped by Sarah's house. We told her host dad what had happened and he said, " Hold on, let me go make you girls a drink." We had a really good dinner at a pizza place called Piolos and hten the girls spent the night at my house.

We woke up early Friday morning and called about flights, but they didn't have any spaces, so we decided to take the 1:00 pm bus. We could only buy the tickets at the terminal, so we hurried over from my house.

After the intial problems, the trip went really smoothly. Wonderfully. It was a loooong bus ride, but not terrible. Sarah brought chips and salsa she had found (not exactly common here) and mate to share. We got to our hostel at 7:30 am Saturday and asked about tours while we were checking in. There was a tour leaving at 8:00 am and we said "We'll do it!" So we changed clothes, brushed our teeth, and grabbed a few pieces of toast and left again. (On a slightly grosser note, we definitely didn't shower for a couple days because of our crazy travels. Definitely a record for me).

The tour was great. The first stop was Trelew, where we took a boat ride to see the toninas (black and white dolphins. Not sure what the name is in English?). When they had said it a dolphin tour I wasn't super excited since I've seen them before, but this was completely different. I felt like a little kid getting all excited on the boat when we spotted them. They swam really fast though, so I have lots of pictures of water without dolphins. =)

We continued on to Punto Tumbo--to see the penguins!! That was the main reason I wanted to go to Puerto Madryn. We got to walk among the penguins in their colony, it was incredible. It wasn't exactly what I had pictured for a penguin's habitat though. They make holes in the dirt or under bushes for their nests. One hill was filled with holes and looked like it should have prairie dogs popping out, but instead there were penguins. No ice. No freezing cold. We were right by the ocean though. Now is the time when the penguins are waiting for their babies to hatch, so we got to see lots of penguin pairs with their eggs. It was interesting as well that there were guanacos (in the llama family) wandering around, in between the penguins. Who knew.

The next stop was Gaiman, a Welsh town where they still speak a mixture of Spanish and Welsh. (A lot of Welsh people migrated to the U.S. and to Argentina. In Argentina they were more sucessful in maintaining their culture, as opposed to the U.S. where they integrated more). We had tea at La Casa de Te Gales (The Welsh Tea House) where Princess Diana visited in 1995. We had lots of tea and pastries.

During the tour we met some cool people, including 4 girls from Belgium, Germany, Israel, and Finland. (Learned that in Belgium the waffles are more of a little old lady's afternoon snack, but the fries are amazing)
Three are studying in Buenos Aires and the other is more or less touring the world (Asia, Australia, South America to be exact) for a year and has been working/living in Buenos Aires for a few weeks. After the tour was over we all headed over to a bar to watch the end of the Argentina v. Chile futbol game (Argentina won, woohoo!). We just continued on to dinner from there, which was quite tasty. By this point we were exhausted,so went back to the hostel to sleep. We had a few complications (lack of sheets, confusion over which beds were occupied/not) which were a bit frustrating, but after it was all cleared up we happily fell asleep.

Sunday we did another full-day tour, this time of Peninsula Valdes. The first stop was probably my favorite. We stopped on the beach and watched about 6-8 whales right off the shore. The whales are Franca whales and go to Peninsula Valdes every year on their way to Antartica and are apparently the biggest whales in th world. They have callosidades (callosities) on their head/face which is kind of a big white...skin.... growth... thing. We saw a grey whale as well (as in color, still a Ballena Franca), which are more rare. We were so close to them, it was really cool to watch. We stopped next to see a dead baby whale that had washed up to shore. Sad. Next we saw elephant seals! They were really cool too. Usually they live offshore a distance where the water is deeper, but they come to shore for a bit to have their babies. We were able to see lots of "little" elephant seal babies. When they're born they're all black and after 25 days they aquire their grey/white coloring. After 25 days their mothers also leave them--sad. The seals were all up and down the shoreline, sleeping in the sun. Some would throw rocks on themselves to cool off, which was kind of amusing to watch. On our next stop we saw some more penguins (same kind as the day before, definitely not as many) and then went on for our boat tour! It was an interesting process they had to get onto the boat and into the water: They had a tractor pull the boat and passengers along the beach and into the water (One of the other tours had the people being pulled on a platform with the boat behind it). You would think the whole process could start a little closer to the water, but I guess whatever floats your boat (or....gets it into the water? yea, sorry). It was nice to be out on the (very blue) water and we saw a decent number of whales, but not as cool as when we were close to them on the shore.

That evening when we went back to Puerto Madryn we went to the beach and had fantastic 6-peso rabas (calamari) from a beach-side stand and some vino tinto. After we got cleaned up a bit and went out for a nice dinner and then early to bed again.

Monday morning we woke up to watch the sunrise on the beach. It was beautiful. We slept for a bit more then got ready and checked out of the hostel. We wandered around town a bit for the morning, had a yummy lunch, and then headed back for the bus. We were tempted to miss it again to stay longer in Puerto Madryn, but decided we had better go back home to BsAs.
The most interesting part of the trip was sharing mate with the bus drivers. I can't remember if I've talked about mate or not, but a quick explanation: Its an Argentine tradition. You drink yerba (like a loose tea) with hot water poured over it out of the mate (a cup made out of a gourd usually) with the bombilla (metal straw). Its usually meant to be passed around and shared in a group of friends, etc. Anyway, the attendant guy (I don't really know what to call him) had commented to Michelle about it and a few minutes later, one of the bus drivers came and sat in the empty seats across from her. He commented as well and asked if we'd like to come down and share mate with the bus drivers. We decided this was too strange of a situation to pass up. (We've also decided that bus drivers have a thing for Michelle, as this is the 3rd time a bus driver has hit on her). We went into the front cabin where the driver is and shared mate with the 2 bus drivers and the assistant/attendant person. Only in Argentina.....

And that, my friends, is the story of Puerto Madryn =)