We had finally reached the point in our trip where we had gone the furthest south we intended to go and needed to start heading north again. We first took a 7.30am bus back over the border to Argentina and towards the coast. For some reason we were the only backpackers on the bus which hasn't happened for a long time. The journey and border crossing were pretty uneventful but we were provided with drinks and a muffin.

Once in Rio Gallegos we had about six hours to fill until the next bus. We ate lunch at "Pizza Express" which was definitely not express, later on visited an internet cafe and in between visited our cultural site of the day, the Falklands Islands war museum.

We were greeted by a friendly man who remained friendly even once we told him our nationality (after a short, sharp intake of breath!). He showed us around what seemed to be his personal collection then asked our view on the Falklands - or Malvinas as they like to call them. I tried my best to explain I didn't have too much of an opinion as the islands are so far away from Britain but that the people who live there want to be British. He said it seems very colonial for us to hold on to them particularly as it costs us a lot of money (I presume he meant to have such a great military presence there). However we didn't get too much further than this due to me struggling with the conversation in Spanish. Fortunately he realised this and sat us down in front of a film (also in Spanish!) with a coffee that he made for us. Eventually we left - we had a nice time although I don't think we learnt too much more about the conflict. Simon later read Wikipedia which seems to suggest Argentina never had claim to the islands and in fact stole a plaque that the British had left there (a "we woz 'ere" type thing) and said it was theirs. The Argentinians seem to miss out this bit of the story.

Happy that we'd successfully filled an afternoon in a pretty dull town, we boarded our night bus (with lie-flat seats: no more slumming it for us now) where we enjoyed a vastly carb-filled dinner and a pretty good sleep. We woke up in the morning to exactly the same scenery. Patagonia is beautiful in many places but at the same time is tediously, bleakly similar over huge stretches of land.

We arrived into Puerto Madryn at around 1pm then spent a lot of the afternoon chilling out at the hostel, enjoying the warm weather and sun. It was nice to be wearing shorts again. We also met some other new arrivals and made plans to hire a car with them to visit the surrounding area. It was also back to cooking, so we ate in the hostel, accompanied by a bottle of wine. We spent quite a while talking to a French couple who were travelling with a two year old and a seven month old - very brave!

The next day, five of us set out in Logan, the Renault hire car. Simon drove and joining us were Carly from Wales, Stephan from Germany (both roughly our age) and Cedrou from France (recently retired and travelling on his own for three months). We were visiting Península Valdés, to the north of Puerto Madryn. We spent much of the day driving along mind-numbingly boring straight roads (much of them gravel so it took even longer) with the same scrubby Patagonian plants on either side. However this was not the point of our journey; we were here to see wildlife. We stopped at various viewpoints over the beach and saw penguins and sea lions. At one beach we saw a lone elephant seal. At the last viewpoint we saw another, lying amongst sea lions, looking ridiculous at over four times the size of them. This really gave us an idea of how large they are - the males can weigh four tonnes! We had also seen some armadillos but were struggling to get good photos of them until one walked up to Simon as we stood in the car park. Along the journey we also encountered many suicidal elegant-crested tinamou birds which decided the best time to cross the road was as a car approached. We were lucky not to hit one. In addition we finally got some better photos of guanacos, llamas' cousins.

We eventually arrived back at the hostel about 12 hours after we set off and settled into another sociable dinner with wine at the hostel.

The next morning Simon and I set off once again with Carly and Stephan for day two in the car, this time to the south. We went to visit Punta Tombo Megellanic penguin colony, the largest in South America, which was excellent. We were so close to penguins the whole time as we walked along marked paths through the protected area, and there were loads of them everywhere. Many of the nests were so far away from the sea so it's quite a long journey for them to waddle and get food. Also the place was really quiet with only one small tour bus and about 10 other car loads so we were free to photograph at will.

After a good couple of hours there amassing photos of penguins in different poses and also spotting other wildlife (armadillos, guanacos, rheas - a type of ostrich - and gerbil-like creatures) we left as it was time to see the Welsh. Carly was very excited about this, being a native herself, as was Stephan, having never experienced Welsh culture before. Simon and I were excited about the prospect of cakes. After some more driving, we eventually ended up in the small town of Gaiman and first headed to tourist info. I think the young guy who worked there perhaps does not get to see many people throughout the day so it was a struggle to get away as he continued to furnish us with more and more facts about the history of the Welsh community in the area. It seems that the Welsh who arrived in the 1800s hit it off rather well with the native people and they quickly started breeding (warring countries should take note). Furthermore he mentioned that there were some scarily tall ladies of between 1.8-2 metres although we're still not sure of their origin.

We eventually extracted ourselves from the office in search of tea and Welsh cakes as the guide book, tourist office and internet had promised us. As quite a touristy place (although quiet when we were there) the tea rooms only did a set tea which consisted of a lot of cake but disappointingly virtually none of it of welsh origin. After some deliberation, we decided to give it a go anyway and sat down to bread, scones, sandwiches, nine varieties of cake and tea from a pot with lovely knitted cosy!!

Stuffed to the brim, we set off back to Puerto Madryn to return the car. On the way back we were surprised to see a very poor shanty town by the side of the road as we drove past the city of Trelew, something we haven't seen since Peru and Bolivia - it's sometimes easy to forget that many people struggle in Argentina.

That evening we all tried to go out for a drink without success as it is more normal for Argentinians to eat at the same time which we didn't want to do. In the end the others bought some beer and we went back to the hostel.

We had a lazy morning the next day as our bus to Buenos Aires didn't leave until 2pm. We'd had a good time travelling around the area which was helped by having a cosy, friendly place to return to each day.

Katy