We set off early from ushuaia, the truck felt empty as 6 people had chosen to fly up to Buenos Aires. It was still freezing on the truck but it felt a lot better with less people. We had to go back into Chile to go north. The border went quite quick a part from a dog sniffed my bag on the truck so it got took off for inspection. In the border office the officer opened up my bag and took Gráinne's phone out and started looking at the back picture of us with lions, he then called over another official to look at it aswell. He put the phone back in and gave us it back and said goodbye, so even if we had anything in the bag, he didn't bother looking. After this we drove to a ferry, we ended up queueing in the wrong queue for 3 hours before another overland truck came past and told us to go in the other queue. But by this point the tide had gone out and they were only letting cars on, so we decided to start cooking while we queued as they said it would be another couple of hours. We got all of the tables, stoves and everything else out and started dishing up, but then our tour leader came rushing back and said we were on the next ferry, we all rushed and panicked and rammed everything back on the truck really quick then got on the ferry.
The ferry lasted about half an hour then we had another hours drive before the border to get back into Argentina.
The border took ages and we didn't get through until after 11 and reached our bush camp at about midnight. The other truck pulled up shortly after but they had to finish making they're dinner after packing up half way through for the ferry. It was a cold night and we were camping next to a volcanic crater, we could see it in the morning and it was pretty cool.
That day was a big drive day to another bush camp which was on a beach, it was really nice and you could tell it was getting warmer. We made a cheesy pasta with garlic bread which was really good, then we had a movie night and watched snatch on the truck as there was so few of us.
The next morning we all got up and were ready to go 20 minutes early because it was so much easier getting things sorted with less people. We drove a lot to another camp site in a place called Camerones. It was a nice campsite on the coast, we had a curry for dinner which went down really well. It was also getting a lot warmer at night so we were sleeping really well. The next day we got up and drove to a Magellanic penguin colony nearby, we could tell we were getting near by the loud horn like sounds they were all making. When they came into view it was amazing, you could see thousands of penguins on the rocks and on the beach. We started walking into the colony and there were penguins all on the path which barely moved as you walked past them, they were really cute and walked really funnily. A lot of them were in holes and paired together, we saw some babies and them diving into and out of the sea which was really amazing. We had a guide but she was really crappy.
We carried on driving after this and it was getting really hot during the day, we drove to a seaside town called Puerto madryn and as soon as we got there booked to snorkel with sea lions the next day. The campsite we were at was nice and we had Aussie burgers which were amazin. That night went to sit with another truck who were drinking a punch bowl and putting money together for a charity. They were all really drunk before we got there and the only one who was OK to talk to was their driver who was really cool.
We woke up early to go down to the snorkelling place, we got a taxi as it was quite far, when we got there we were told we weren't supposed to be there until half 8 even though our ticket said 8. This meant we had to kill about 40 minutes when nothing was open at all. We went back at half 8 and waited a bit until they told us that the wind was too strong to go out and to go back at about 11ish. So we got a taxi back to camp and had breakfast of pancakes with the group. Luckily the driver was taking the truck through town at this point so we got a lift, when we went back in they said the weather was still rough, and we could still go if we wanted but it wouldn't be very good so we could get a refund if we wanted. We got a refund which was a shame because it looked really good on the videos they were showing in the shop.
We met up with others in town and went for a sea food lunch in town, it was recommended by the tour leader but wasn't very good.
That night we had a barbeque of steak and jacket potatoes and salad which was again really good.
The following day we had a long drive to a bush camp behind a petrol station where we got eaten alive by bugs. We made chicken parmiggiano and herbed potatoes which again went down amazingly and then followed it up with another movie night on the truck. This was our last stop before Buenos Aires, and even though we had a lot of driving the past few days it was really enjoyable being able to spread out on the truck and we could all talk in a group as there wasn't too many of us. Everyone that stayed had a really good time and were not looking forward to the truck being full again.