It seems that our ong haul journeys always seem to have a story to them. This time we caught the local underground to the intercity bus station in Buenos Aires to meet our friends Jeff and Ramona to head to Puerto Madryn. In order to get into the station we had to walk through a local outdoor market. We obviously stuck out like sore thumbs, backpacks and all. So we are strolling around towards the station quite chuffed with ourselves for getting there without incident, when all of a sudden an old women approached us shouting 'kaka kaka'. She quite conveniently had tissues in her hand and started wiping our bags to show us that we had both been shat on!!! She and a few other people in the vicinity tried to coerse us into a bathroom to clean up but we continued on against their attempts to stop us until we reached a bathroom in the station. There we had to wipe down our bags with wipes and Jeff had to change as so much of it had landed on his clothes. Jeff, being as streetwise as he always is was very cynical about their motives and was convinced that no bird could eat that much food and on closer inspection we realised that it had a very acidic smell!! It soon dawned on us that those 'helpful' locals had sprayed our bags with what we think was mustard and were waiting for one of us to put our bags down to clean up so that they could run off with our stuff. It was bound to happen sooner or later but luckily this time we passed our first travel scam test!

We travelled on an overnight bus and arrived in Puerto madryn mid morning. This is a town on the east coast of the continent in north Patagonia which is renowned for its remarkable volume of indigineous Patagonian wildlife. We had met a few other backpackers on the bus who were headed to the same hostel as us so we all strolled the streets of the town toegther with the lonely planet in hand searching for our hostel. 'Hi Patagonia' was once a family home that had been converted into a hostel and was run by a really sweet man named Gaston. They oriented us with the optional tours to be done around the coast and the Peninsula. The four of us took the rest of the day and strolled along the beach front until we found a posh restaurant at the edge of the pier where we ate and made the decision to rent a car for the four of us for the next 2 days to take around to the peninsular and the Sourthern coastline. In the evening we ate dinner with the rest of the backpackers at a long wooden table spread with mountains of meat, prawns, potatoe, rice and salad - A FEAST!

We woke early the next morning to be on the road at 8:00am. We headed off to the peninsular where we were booked on a zodiac boat trip to do some whale watching and spend the rest of the day driving around at our leaisure to all the different viewpoints that the peninsular offered. Unfortunately for us (and the car) the roads were gravelled.. we couldnt drive too fast and we were seriously cutting it fine to catch our booked boat trip at 9:30. Jeff from Holland was a star driver though and we managed to get there within minutes of being life jacketed and boarded. None of us knew what to expect but there is no way we could have anticipated what we saw. There were Southern Right Wales everywhere you looked. Our boat followed around a Cow and its calf who were playing leisurely in the water right next to our boat - posing with their tales in the air for minutes and jumping full out of the water for the most amazing wildlife photo shots! It was a beautiful time of day - the sun was shimmering on the sea and we were in the middle of it for close to 2 hours with these huge, amazing creatures to keep us company - Truly Spectacular!

We then took a 2 hour drive up to a viewing point at a cliff to see a colony of wild Elephant seals beached on the edge of the sea. The ride up was for us, South Africans, the equivalent of driving around the game reserve - looking out the window in search of wildlife, except instead of lions and elephants we were looking for guanacos (patagonian llamas), Armadillos, Rheas (emus), patagonian hares and grey and red foxes. We were lucky enough to see them all and it was just as exciting as any lion/rhino spotting. One of the other stops along the way had a little restaurant where we drank tea to warm our frozen bones and took a walk down to the beach to get a closer look at the colony of sea lions we had seen from the cliff. We laughed on the way back to the car because we spotted a little armadillo (which are very strange armered little ratty creatures) but we were so excited about it and taking pictures that we reminded ourselves of foreign tourist we see at the Kruger park snapping away at monkeys and warthogs. We drove further north in the hopes of spotting killer whales/Orcas which are common around the peninsular as well but rare to actually see. We were all very optimistic but unfortunately it wasnt to be.We drove back to the hostel during a most beautiful sunset and gorged into a mountain of Macaroni and cheese for dinner after which we hit the sack to be bright and early for the next full day.

We headed to Punto Tumbo on our second day which is a reserve that is home for 6 months fo the year, to the largest penguin colony in the southern hemipshere. They were everywhere - many nests just on the side of the road, many marching on the foot path and thousand dotted on every hill in the vicinity. It was interesting to see how most of them were paired up and how affectionate they were with each other and how unaffected they were by the human presence. So little affected in fact, that one of the penguins approached jeff and started nipping at his jeans. We ate lunch of cheese sandwiches (always bread and cheese) from the boot of the car and prepared ourselves for what was to be a looooong journey back to the hostel.

We hadnt filled the car with petrol that morning as our little red VW Gol had managed to do 400km with half the tank the day before. We had less than that to drive today and so thought it unnecassary to put more petrol in - well...we were we wrong!! The closest station to Punta Tumbo was over 100km away and our petrol gauge read 1 millimetre off from the reserve tank. A guy from the reserve told us that if we drove under 80km/h the whole way back we would make it - we were skeptical. We took a bet to see who would come closest to the km the reserve would take us before running out. Jeff (SA) was the most pesimitic at 42 km, Rome guessed 50km, Ramona thought wede make it 70km but Jeff (Holland) thought we would make it there.At a point however, we all agreed tha it was an inevitablity that we would be stranded and even came up with a plan for the eventuality. Along the long desolate road we came across one farm house . We pulled over and the two Jeffs jumped the fence to find if the owner had any spare petrol just lying around - they came back empty-handed. We all sat in silence waiting for the car to give off its last breath and die... we waited, and waited and waited... We got further and further until by some miracle 100km later we made it to a petrol station - shocked and amazed but so relieved.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at restaurant on the beach, playing s***head and drinking lots of tea and beer. It started to rain slightly but it cleared up in time for the sunset and brought with it a stunning rainbow across the horizon. The sky was every shade of pink and orange. A most fitting ending to a few nature filled days in Puerto Madryn.