Time to begin the mammoth journey back north. Next on the itinerary was the Welsh founded town of Puerto Madryn. We looked into flying but the few direct flights had sold out months ago and via Buenos Aires was only slightly cheaper than a first class ticket on Virgin Galactic. Bus it was.

This involved two journeys, a mere 5 hours to the east coast town of Rio Gallegos and then a 17 hour overnight marathon up to Puerto Madryn. Anything of interest to report? No, not really. I can't even remember any of the movies on the overnight bus. Thank you again Apple for the iPad.

We arrived in Puerto Madryn mid afternoon on Friday 14th, bumping into Kieran and Crystal at the bus station as they left for Buenos Aires. Promises made to meet up there, we checked into our very welcoming, French owned and run hostel. Quelle surprise.

For some naive reason we were expecting a quaint seaside town. Of course we got a built up port town full of hotels, restaurants and car hire agencies. Not unpleasant though. In any case we weren't there for the town, Puerto Madryn is the base for the Peninsula Valdés, a whale watching and sea mammal hot spot. However it transpired that we'd managed to time our visit with the very end of the whale watching season - normally the tours see dozens, currently some weren't seeing any. Oops.

We teamed up with a Scottish couple in our hostel and hired a car for the weekend. Despite being the base for the tours, the town is a good 100km from where the boats leave from, and 176km from a famed sea lion community. Having your own transport is cheaper and provides greater flexibility. Despite it being low season we still had to visit half a dozen hire companies before we got ourselves a car.

All set for an early start, a quiet night was had by all.