Finally we are in Patagonia, one of the areas we were very much looking forward to be in. And we are also finally over our Jetlag! But to be honest, our first impression of Puerto Madryn was not too positive. Our AirBnB apartment was a bit off the main streets, so we had to walk quite a bit to get into town but it seemed all closed down. We couldn’t even find a nice place for dinner and wondered if December was completely off season here.
The apartment itself on the other hand was small but functional and we extended our stay by one day. So you can see, it wasn’t all bad after all. As with many other places, we just had to find our way and in the end we loved the place, but let’s start from the beginning.
The main reason we decided to come here was the Valdes Peninsula, a mecca for wildlife and famous for whales, sea elephants, penguins, orcas etc.
We didn’t see all of them but saw our fair share and as expected it involves a lot of luck and being there at the right time of the year. Turns out, we are here at the right time for penguins!
Our first question was if we rent a car or book a guided trip/tour. The TripAdvisor reviews and recommendations were mixed and after talking to a few people we decided (against my better judgement seeing the driving first hand, the amount of dented cars etc) to rent a car. Found a nice rental agency and off we went – right hand driving again and manual car as well. One thing to note is that you can’t insure or reduce excess – so things could get pretty expensive if we would have had an accident (which we didn’t have!).
For a start, it made grocery shopping much easier as we could go to one of the big chains here and stock up on supplies. Overall, life is a bit cheaper than back home in NZ and so far we stick to our budget ok. After getting things sorted and groceries done, we drove out to the main whale watching beach (Playa El Doradillo). It was the end of the whale season and there were no whales to be seen. Apparently you can get lucky still at this time of the year on a boat trip but we didn’t even try. After all we have plenty of whales at our doorstep back home in Kaikoura. At this and another few other beaches in the area, Southern Right Whales swim right up to the beach with their calves. Must be a fantastic experience but you have to be there in August/September. Still great to have our first beach day of the holidays!
The next day was a long day on the Peninsula Valdes, and it was great. It is a long drive on gravel but definitely worth it. We saw plenty of Magellan penguins, Mara, Lamas, flamingos (?!) wild horses and many other animals. And I finally could start to put my new little compact camera to use, which so far does a great job (Panasonic LUMIX TZ95 if you are interested).
We spent our final day in Puerto Madryn mingling with the locals at the beach and exploring other parts of the town before giving back our rental car, shouldering our backpacks and making our way to the bus station. Before we were ready to embark on a 15 hour overnight bus trip to Bariloche, we stopped at a craft beer bar to mentally prepare… So far I still have to find a really nice craft beer over here but had at least the odd IPA.
Idea is to save one night accommodation by travelling in pretty comfortable buses to your next itinerary and overall it worked out well. Problem was that all kids got sick during the trip…
But in the end we made it pretty much on time to Bariloche in the heart of Patagonia and moved into our new apartment for the next 5 nights.
