puerto madryn y peninsula valdes

I have now spent more than a week between Puerto Madryn and Peninsula Valdes, visiting lots of places and meeting lots of people.

In the camping in Madryn I met Adrian from Buenos Aires, Esteban from Mar del Plata, Cecilia from Rosario and Luisa with her three kids Facundo, Lucas and Florencia from Rio Grande and we celebrated the new year together and from then we are basically like a family, meeting to eat together, playing with the kids and just enjoying chatting and sharing each other's company.

I visited the Ecocentro, the museum which shows everything one needs to know about life in the sea with an interesting section dedicated to the animals which populate this part of the coast, sea lions, sea elephants, penguins and of course the greatest attraction of all, the southern right whale.

I have also visited the Museo del Desembarco, a small exhibition which explains the birth and evolution of the Welsh colony in Chubut, a region which still has a very strong Welsh community, with cities like Gaiman and Trelew where people still speak welsh and traditions are kept alive.

After a few days of rest spent between the camping and the beach, I decided it was time to cycle to Puerto Piramides, the only town on the World Heritage Site of Peninsula Valdes, a natural paradise where thousands of different species of animals, plants and fishes can be found, and the place where tons of tourists come every year for a close encounter with the southern right whales.

I cycled the 100 km to Puerto Piramides in a very hot day, the same day the old "Paris-Dakar" (Argentina-Chile 2009) came into town, but as I am a very ecological tourist I thought about avoiding it and instead enjoy a full immersion with nature on the route to the Reserva Nacional.

I saw wild guanacos (crossing the road on the picture), ostriches, horses and many sheep on my way there and even though the heat was overwhelming the wind was not against me for once......

I arrived to discover a very crowded Puerto Piramides, given that it was Sunday and the first weekend of the new year, and an even more crowded and dirty camping, but after my 100 km ride all I needed was something to eat and a small place where to put up my tent and sleep.

After a good rest, I met up with Esteban (the guy I met in Puerto Madryn) and went for a nice walk through a deserted beach and an amazing landscape made of rocks and sandy cliffs shaped by the sea and the wind, from here the views were amazing and it was now easier to appreciate the beauty of this part of the Peninsula.

The beach and the Camping were now a bit emptier and everything was more enjoyable, on the Tuesday I went for a guided tour of the Peninsula, visiting places that were basically unreachable by bike and without campings or services my initial plan of cycling around the Reserva had now been dropped.

We drove to Punta Norte as the english speaking guide talked about the animals we were going to see, the landscape around us and many more things.

The sea lions colony could be seen from the top of a sandy hill overlooking the beach in an amazing spot, even if the animals were probably not very happy to receive hundreds of tourists every day, they were certainly living in a natural paradise (see pictures in the italian post above).

After that, we drove to Caleta Valdes to see the penguins and more fantastic beaches with breathtaking views, a few kilometres away we visited the beach of Punta Cantor where a sea-elephants colony lives all year round, and descended to stand only a few metres away from the animals.

I spent my last evening with Francesco, an Italian tourist who was travelling around Argentina, we spent some time on the beach, went to eat a steak and talked about travelling by bicycle and many other things.

I woke up at 5.30 and started my ride back to Puerto Madryn, this time in a very cold wind (obviously not in my favour....) for the first half of my journey. The second part proved to be a bit easier as it got warmer and the wind calmed down, I felt my legs were stronger and cycled faster to arrive in Madryn in the early afternoon.

I was happy to be back in the camping to find my friends, and to have visited such a fantastic place, in Peninsula Valdes I really saw places I will never forget and I think it was amazing to see animals so different in the same place, I saw guanacos, ostriches, sheep, horses, armadillos, seagulls, cormorans, sea lions, sea elephants, penguins and foxes.

I am learning many things about my body's capabilities, my phisycal strenghts and weaknesses as I am now approaching the 1000 km but also that the most important thing is the mind....if I want, I can !!!!!