Puerto Madryn is a small town on the Argentine coast, situated in an area of Patagonia that is famous for both coastal wildlife and the continuing influence of Welsh settlers that arrived here in the late 1900´s. We arrived in town at about 7am after a 16-hour overnight bus journey and we hadn´t had a great deal of sleep. We made our way to the hostel and took advantage of the free breakfast, then found out we had to wait until 2pm before we could get into our room. We spent a while wandering around town aimlessly before the receptionist took pity and let us use a spare room to nap in until our dorm was ready. We spent the rest of a lazy day getting to know our way around the town and looking into possible excursions for our time here. We spent the next day walking along the seafront, where we saw a flock of flamingos in the surf, thenchecked out a couple of museums that detailed the surrounding wildlife. The first place was in the centre of town, quite small and moderately interesting (when they had any english signs I could read), but the second museum was miles away along the coast. If we had known how long it would take to walk we probably wouldn´t have bothered, but it was pretty good. We walked part way back as the sun was setting, then got the bus the rest of the way. In the evening we ate at a local Welsh restaurant called Mr. Jones´ that was delicious. In the morning we checked out at 10am and took the bus to Gaiman, which took about 2 hours. This small village is one of the first Welsh settlements in Patagonia, and still has a strong Welsh heritage. We checked in to our guesthouse, then went for a walk around town. We had to walk through an old railway tunnel - which was pitch black - to get to the tourist information centre, and from there we went to the Welsh museum. In the evening we went to one of the famous Welsh tea rooms for tea and cakes. It was quite touristy and expensive, but they gave us so many cakes that you couldn´t really complain. We couldn´t even eat half of them, and we had to ask them to pack the rest up for us to take away. In the evening we stayed in the guesthouse and drank a bottle of wine. We got chatting to an old Australian couple that were also staying there, and it turned out her grandfather was one of the original settlers. The next morning we checked out of the guesthouse, but left our bags there whilst we took a look around the rest of the town. We went up to the graveyard, where we found several graves with Welsh names and places on them. Afterwards we took in the founding house and the Welsh church among other buildings, then took the bus back to Puerto Madryn. When we got there we booked an excursion to the Valdes Peninsula for the next morning, then got an early night. The next day we were up at 7am to go on the trip. We were picked up in a minibus, then took the 2 hour drive out to the peninsula. The first activity when we arrived was whale watching. We went out in a small boat and got really close to some Sothern Right Whales - Much closer than we had when we saw whales in Australia. At some points you could see 6 or 7 whales at once, and we occasionally had them swimming right under the boat. We even saw a white whale calf. Once the boat trip was finished we had a quick lunch, then drove further out onto the peninsula. We saw a couple of salt flats, which at about 50m below sea level, are the lowest points of Argentina, then drove towards a couple of elephant seal colonies. We got quite close to them, but we weren´t allowed onto the beach. We were a little unlucky with our timing too, as killer whales come here to catch seal pups from the beach. I think we were about 2 weeks to early. We continued on to a penguin colony, where we managed to get really close, then headed back to town. When we got back we had about 2 hours to kill before getting a 20 hour bus to Buenos Aires.