Following the excitement of Puerto Madryn, we decided to get a little closer to home and caught an early evening bus to the town of Trelew, a Welsh colony (yes Welsh!) right in the heart of Argentina. Arriving late, we headed to the first place listed in the guide book, which was conveniently located across from the bus station – what a bad idea! The place was ridiculously overpriced, dark and dingy, but since we were hungry and tired we decided to dump our bags and head off for some food. On the way we checked out a few of the other budget options listed in the guidebook, but they all seemed to be of similar price and standard, and being such a small place hostels were non-existent, so we ended up sticking where we were. Half an hours walk around the town revealed the reason why most people don’t bother with Trelew – there`s nothing there, at least not for the budget traveller! A collection of standard shops, chavs (yes really!), a few posh hotels, restaurants and casinos and that’s your lot! The place doesn’t even look particularly nice!! Nonetheless, we ended up spending a few nights there, because our flight down to the next stop (El Calafate) wasn’t for a few days . The next day we headed off to the town’s famous Palaeontological (spelling?!?!) museum, which we have to admit was the only thing that made it worth the trip. Life size models of dinosaurs and some AMAZING fossils filled a couple of rooms, along with a really good account of the rise and fall of the dinosaur age. The fossils covered everything from early plant and aquatic life, to both land and flying dinosaurs and we managed to entertain ourselves for a fair amount of time, especially as there were some hilarious dinosaur comic strips to explain parts of the story!!. That afternoon we caught a bus to neighbouring Welsh town, Gaiman. This was possibly the only thing more pointless than the existence of Trelew!!! Gaiman is famed for having old Welsh tea rooms….and not a lot else. We arrived during the siesta hour so the place was COMPLETELY dead. We wandered up and down the main road and saw nothing but dogs, until we reached the end where a primary school courtyard was filled with children on their lunch break. For some reason they were all dressed in lab coats…..go figure?!?! The children and teachers looked at us as if we were mad for bothering to come to Gaiman (we can’t really blame them!) and it seemed that we were the tourist attraction of the town, since none of these famed tea rooms seemed to be on any of the roads we wandered down. Eventually it started raining and luckily after wandering up and down the same road four times, a lady came out of her house and pointed us in the direction of the tourist office. The guy in the office was lovely and helpful, but given that there isn’t too much to DO in Gaiman, we imagine this wasn’t a particularly hard job and with the lack of tourists, we had probably been the most interesting part of his day! Nonetheless, he pointed us in the direction of the tea rooms and we headed to the first and oldest one in the town. We have to admit it was quite quaint, and nice to get out of the rain. The teahouse was filled with old pictures and relics, newspaper cuttings and a fireplace, and run by two very sweet old ladies who were telling us where in Wales their families had come from. We passed a few hours there, as you just pay a fixed fee and they bring you unlimited tea and cakes, breads, jam and biscuits and it did turn out to be just what we needed. Unfortunately, after this we had to return on the bus to the wonderful town of Trelew to pass yet ANOTHER night, but thankfully in the early hours of the morning we left for the aiport to catch our flight to El Calafate