Puerto Madryn, Argentina

After a very long 28 hour bus journey including 4 hours further south a four hour wait in a grotty bus station followed by 18 hours on a smelly bus we arrived in Puerto Madryn. There was no snow in sight and the sun was shining. We were pre booked in to hostel so headed straight over there. The hostel was basically someones house with lots of bunkbeds in their spare rooms up stairs and a little out house with a kitchen, climbing wall and a double room. This was our room. It was very nice and just what we needed after a long bus journey. No body was around as they were all out on tours so we had a bit of a wander around, caught up with some sleep and arrange our tour to the whales the following day and our bus trip out of Puerto Madryn. We weren't going to get caught out again with transport. Good job we did this so soon as all the buses were full and there wasn't a bus till the Monday. Our flight to NZ was getting closer by the day and we were still so far away from Chile.
By the time the evening came the others in the hostel began returning home and our friend Tanya was there. She'd left a few days before us so had done the whale watching. So we caught up and had a few drinks.
The following day we had an early pick up to head out to the whale watching. Our tour was in a private car with two other people. So we drove about 2 hours to get to where the famous whales were. The whales we were seeing were called right whales. we got in to our safety gear and climbed aboard the boat which was then pushed out to sea with a tractor! We were the only English aboard and there was no English translator so could not understand a word that was being said about the whales. We kind of get the gist of things though. We'd been motoring out to sea for about 20 minutes when the boat slowed down, we waited and watched then suddenly we saw them. These whales were bigger than our boat and enjoyed swimming under it which was a bit scary! They were huge and were amazing to watch, they didn't seem scared of us and just swam around the boat. we saw a few dive and then a few of them began to hang there tails out of the water which was a great sight! We were out there for a good hour watching the displays of nature and it was well worth the long bus trip to get there. I have some fab photos of them which are on flickr.
After arriving back on to dry land we had lunch and were meeting our guide and the other 2 people on our tour. We were due to meet at one. The guide, Brett & I were there but the other two were no where to be seen...two hours later and as we were just about to leave we found them looking a little flustered...they had only just met and were now loves young dream!
We then had about a two hour drive to another part of the coast line to go and see sea lions. We'd seen so many sea lions on the coast of California and in San Francisco we didn't think that that experience could be beaten and we were right. On the huge beach which we'd driven two hours to get to there were just 2 sea lions. So, we had a little wander with our guide trying to extend our time for as long as he could with only two sea lions to see before heading back to the car for about a 4 hour drive back to our hostel.
We'd pre arranged dinner with Tanya and a couple of other s from the hostel so on our return, we headed to cash machines as we were checking out early the following day and the hostels only take cash. This can be a bit of a nightmare as the Argentina cash points only some times allow 100 pesos a day which is about twenty quid. So the search began and all the cash machines were out of service. So Brett and a couple of the others went on a little search whilst we found some where to eat. An hour had past and they still hadn't returned at which point we were getting a little concerned. An hour and a half later they returned with no cash and minus a bank card which the machine had taken! So we had dinner and an even earlier start the following day as the search for cash begun again. Luckily the machines had been re filled so we were lucky.
We were catching a bus from Puerto Madryn to Mendoza with some fellow travellers..Tanya & Andy, its so nice to travel with people you know as all the bus journeys so far had been just me and Brett being the only English on board. Andy could speak some Spanish which was so handy for us. So we headed to the bus station and board the bus for another 28 hour bus journey to Mendoza...aka The wine district....