From Valdivia we spent the day on a bus crossing the border into Argentina. The good thing about Chile and Argentina is that we don't need a visa for either (although we did get slugged with a $60 fee when we flew into Santiago - luckily crossing into Argentina by land was free). Our first port of call in Argentina was Bariloche.
We were expecting Bariloche to be a bit smaller - it turned to be a big city but it was in very pretty location. It was very touristy and since it is the middle of high season the main streets were crowded with tourists at all hours of the day and night (and given that Argentinians don't eat dinner until about 10.30pm this meant that the streets were crowded pretty much 24/7). Bariloche is reknowned for its chocolate and we may have fallen victim to one or two of the chocolate shops littering the main streets during our stay!
Bariloche is technically within the bounds of Patagonia (or at least according to itself) and is surrounded by a bunch of pretty lakes and mountains. Some of the mountains have patches of snow on them. One of the main tourist things to do is take a bike around the circuito chico which is a circuit of about 35km around some of the most picturesque roads in the area and we headed out to do this on our first full day. We ended up taking about 5 hours to complete the circuit as we kept stopping all the time to take photos (yes and to rest!) but you can do it in just a few hours if you are fit enough (and crazy enough!). There were quite a few hills which were hard going but the views from the top were great.
The next day we checked out the town a little bit as we were exhausted from the bike ride - not much to report. The day after I had to stay at the hostel and do another insurance claim as the laundromat where we took our clothes to get washed lost my hiking pants! Laundry in Chile and Argentina is simply daylight robbery. It costs us around 30 pesos to have our clothes washed and dried which is nearly AU$10!!!!!!! And on top of that they go and lose my clothes??????? It is very frustrating as none of the hostels have washing machines or even anywhere to hang your clothes if you do a hand wash. Aaargh!
The other annoying thing about Argentina is that every single ATM we have found charges us a fee for withdrawing money. It's the first country where we just haven't been able to find an ATM that doesn't charge the fee. The fee is almost AU$5 for one withdrawal and the maximum you can get out is about AU$300 in one go. Soooooo frustrating.
Anyway, while I was doing my insurance claim, Paul went out to climb Cerro Campanario, a small mountain close to town which had an amazing view. We hadn't been able to decide where to go after Bariloche. We could either head down Ruta 40, the highway down the interior of Argentina which ends up at the glaciers of El Calafate in the south. However it was a 33 hour bus ride and we had heard that there wasn't much to see along the way except mile upon mile of windswept Patagonian tundra. The other option was to take Ruta 3 down the east coast and stop a couple of places to see all the wildlife before ending up at El Calafate. In the end we made the decision to take Ruta 3 so from Bariloche we jumped on an overnight bus to Puerto Madryn on the east coast.
The town of Puerto Madryn was not that nice - it was windy and dusty most of the time. But we had two fantastic days there checking out all the wildlife in the area. The first day there we went on a tour to visit Peninsula Valdes which is basically a huge nature reserve. There we saw sea lions, elephant seals, magellanic penguins, a type of Argentinian deer called a guanaco, a couple of foxes and even an armadillo! There were so many sea lion pups it was amazing. They were all over the place, all lying on top of each other. Some of them were really small and it was hard to believe that they could survive very long on the beach by themselves. We did see a couple of dead pups too which was sad.
The only things we didn´t see was orcas - apparently they come in close to shore to try to feed on the sea lion pups but they couldn´t have been too hungry that day. It was a long day with a lot of driving on dusty roads but the wildlife was great. The next day we headed south out of Puerto Madryn on another tour. Our first stop was to do a boat trip to see the Commerson´s dolphin in one of the bays south of Puerto Madryn. We only saw about 4 dolphins but it was still pretty awesome as they were black and white and very pretty. After that we kept going south to this huge colony of Magellanic penguins. It was the most penguins I had ever seen in one spot - apparently there can be nearly 1 million there sometimes.
The only things we didn´t see was orcas - apparently they come in close to shore to try to feed on the sea lion pups but they couldn´t have been too hungry that day. It was a long day with a lot of driving on dusty roads but the wildlife was great. The next day we headed south out of Puerto Madryn on another tour. Our first stop was to do a boat trip to see the Commerson´s dolphin in one of the bays south of Puerto Madryn. We only saw about 4 dolphins but it was still pretty awesome as they were black and white and very pretty. After that we kept going south to this huge colony of Magellanic penguins. It was the most penguins I had ever seen in one spot - apparently there can be nearly 1 million there sometimes.
At this time of year all the baby penguins are shedding their baby feathers and getting their adult feathers. There were so many babies all over the place, most of them were squawking to be fed. Some of them were all by themselves while their mothers and fathers were off fishing. Some of the babies still had all their baby feathers and they were huge - way bigger than the adults. Some of the other babies had almost lost all their baby feathers and just had some still around their head which looked funny.
The penguins make nests on the coast up to 1km inland from the sea. The path went right through the middle of the colony and you could see many penguins in their nests by the side of the path and even crossing the path in front and behind you. There were a couple of raised walkways designed to let the penguins walk through underneath and there were heaps of penguins camped out under there to escape the sun. I have never been so close to penguins in my entire life. It was really amazing. When we got down to the beach we couldn't believe our eyes - there were just so many penguins on the beach. There were some just swimming around in the shallow water and heaps of fat, fluffy babies sitting on the rocks. It was pretty cute.
After Puerto Madryn we headed south again, this time to Rio Gallegos - another overnight bus ride. Luckily the buses in Chile and Argentina are really comfortable - if you go cama class it's like being on the plane as they give you food and a blanket and everything. We arrived in Rio Gallegos this morning and as there isn't much to see we're heading out tomorrow. At first we didn't know where to go - to El Calafate to visit the glaciers or south to Ushuaia to the end of the world (practically). We eventually decided to go to El Calafate and El Chalten on the bus and to try to catch a flight to Ushuaia later. We'll see how that goes...
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