We arrived into Puerto Madryn through the semi desert of Patagonia, just flat land with scorched bushes for as far as you can see, and headed straight to meet a girl we´d met in Bariloche, Therese, to go on a tour of the area. It was just the three of us with our own private guide in his car which was pretty cool. Our first stop was Rawson to take a boat out into the Atlantic to see the dolphins, it was quite a rough ride out into the sea especially first thing in the morning but so worth it! The dolphins (Commerson Dolphins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerson%27s_Dolphin) are really small, black and white and just gorgeous. They jumped right in front of us and swam along beside the boat. Really playful and very cool to see.

Next stop was Punta Tomba, a Magellanic penguin colony over 25 hectares of seafront land. To get there we had to drive over serious shingle roads, half of which had been washed away and our guide turned out to be quite a maniac driver but hey we got there in one piece in the end. The penguins were amazing, they come back to this spot every year to mate and have their babies and change their feathers. They just wandered around in front of us, hung around in their nests protecting their young and calling out to their partners for food, or basked in the sun or swam out to catch some food. It was amazing to be so close to them, even having to stop walking on the track to let the ones who were returning from the sea with their catch to feed the family pass in front of us. One even walked straight up to Therese and bit her leg which was really funny!! Eva you´ll be proud to know I did a little penguin jump with them just for you!

The next day we decided to be a bit more active and rented bikes and cycled for 17km on a serious dirt track to Punta Loma to see a sealion colony. The dirt track was seriously hard to cycle on, especially in the places where it just turned to deep sand or deep shingle and you just couldn´t get a grip. The worst part was actually getting back on the bikes after the sealion colony with already bruised bums to cycle the 17km back! But the sealions were fabulous, it´s a spot where they come to have their babies as well and the big macho sealions kept having a go at each other and roaring and yelling while the others basked in the sun and the lapping waves and some of the youngsters played in the sea. The views of the Atlantic were fabulous too and we came across huge sand dunes and even a motor cross track that some locals had made out of the sand where they were practising their jumps and stunts on motorbikes. Very impressive!

Puerto Madryn itself is a real Argentine holiday village with a few beaches, calm sea and a nice prom which we enjoyed walking up and down in the evening. Huge cruise ships dock here and there´s a massive miltary ship off the pier and lots of locals fly fishing at night from the pier into the sea.

Now its time for another long overnight bus journey to el Calafate to visit a glacier...

P. S. Our first experience in ´cama´ seats on a bus on the way to Puerto Madryn, cama is the spanish word for bed so these seats on the bus are really spacious and they recline to become something similar to a bed, but to be honest it´s still not at all bed-like but still much better than any bus I´ve been on before so don´t feel too sorry for us. They also serve food (not good food but hey we´re travellers now) and show english movies with spanish subtitles - a real luxury at the moment and not a bad way to pass 12 hours on a bus!

We´ve been looking at the altars beside the road presuming that they were for drivers killed on the road but our guide explained that they´re actually for Argentine legends, one called Gauchito who was a Robin Hood type figure who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor but eventually he was caught and killed but he cursed the sons of the men who killed him and they all became sick so the people pray to him. Apparently they´re trying to get the catholic church to accept him as a saint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauchito_Gil). Another is a woman whose husband was sent off to fight in the civil war in Argentina while she was pregnant and she gave birth while he was away so when he was next posted close to home she took her baby and walked through the desert trying to find him and show him his son but she died of thirst but miraculously the baby was found alive. Now people leave bottles of water by altars to her and pray for her to mind all of the people on the road.