Upon arriving in Comodoro Rivadavia I decided to catch the next bus further north to the city of Trelew. The Lonely Planet didn’t have much positive to say about Comodoro, and checking online the forums seemed to agree it wasn’t really place worth stopping at. It was 7:30am and Trelew was 6 hours away, so it made perfectly good sense timing wise to continue on.

The Argentinian sweet tooth comes across even in their bus food. Lunch on the bus included a stock ham and cheese sandwich, and it was accompanied by custard, caramel biscuits and nougat wafers. The sweets were more filling than the actual meal!

In Trelew I really only wanted to spend the night here just to sleep in an actual bed instead of the previous nights bus. To be honest the buses are very
comfortable, and the semi-cama (half bed) buses still allows for a decent night
sleep. It isn’t the same as a proper bed, though, and I made my way through
Trelew visiting the two hotels lists in the Lonely Planet.

The first place had no single rooms, just doubles and charging at double prices. If I stayed for two nights she’d give me the room for $170 pesos, which was still too
expensive. So I left and went to the second hotel, and was directed to talk to
the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen. She was short, angry and didn’t look like
she’d washed in a few years. When I asked about a room she more or less glared
at me, then wrote down $200 pesos for the night. This was for a single room
too. I don’t think I hid my shock as my eyes widened and let out a muffled
scoff, the absurdity of her asking price was a little too much.

I declined and left, bewildered at how rude the woman was. For someone that ugly you’d think they’d try and make up for it with a jolly personality or something. I felt at this stage that Trelew didn’t really have anything to offer, other than expensive accommodation, and made my way back to the bus terminal to be just in time to catch the next bus to the nearby waterfront town of Puerto Madryn – a place a was planning on visiting next anyway.

An hour later I was off the bus and waiting for the baggage handler to make an
appearance, a $2 peso note in my palm ready for payment. There was not,
however, a baggage guy. When one of the other passengers opened the cargo and just got his bag out, I shrugged and did the same. I guess the short trip buses
don’t need bag men.

The hostal was possibly the most modern hostal I’d stayed at, and best of all one of the managers was fan of 60/70’s music and had Pink Floyd belting out in the common area when ever he was on shift. I also had an odd room mate in the 6 bed room dorm – he spent most of the day smoking pot and getting up around 1am to go out. Apparently it’s an Argentinian thing, that people don’t go out to clubs until around 2am, and while it shouldn’t surprise me that Argentinians are such night owls, I can’t help but think it’s completely strange.

Puerto Madryn has three big attractions. First there’s the beach, a lengthy stretch of sand that would be glorious in the summer. It was winter here, and not a soul
was in the water, although it wasn’t actually that cold at all and if this were
back home in Sydney they’d still be dozens of people swimming ocean. The second attraction, one which I was here for, is the penguin colony south of town in an area called Punto Tombo. My excitement to see cool little penguins in their
natural habitat was dashed when I was told there were no penguins this time of
year. After wiping away a tear full of disappointment, I booked a tour to the
third attraction.

The peninsula Valdez is north of town and it’s an expensive tour. It cost twice the
amount the glacier tour was, so I was expecting at least twice the awesomeness.
Sadly the entire thing is a huge waste money. The tour guide was fantastic and
we drove in a sedan to the peninsula along with a Dutch lady who was a back
packer back in her previous years and now just wanted to stay in a bit of
luxury in her older age, and two elderly Argentinian ladies, the eldest of
which was clearly addicted to matte as she had to drink the stuff in the car as
though it could be her last (and to be fair, at her age it could have been).

The entire peninsula is a protected park and they’ve gone a little over board in
protecting it to the point you’re not even allowed to get out of the car unless
you’re in designated areas. Unfortunately these areas aren’t interesting. The
peninsula has three salt lakes, which look spectacular from the distance of the
road, but no visiting allowed, just observe with binoculars at these natural
wonders! It’s such a shame, as this area would be amazing to explore if you
could get off the road. And while I understand why areas need to be protecting,
the peninsula doesn’t exactly have unique wildlife or plants that decry the
need for them to be sheltered from human visitation.

The one highlight of the day was whale watching. While the penguins were absent and not ready to get down and do some mating, the whales were. The entire bay of Puerto Madryn is mating grounds for whales and you can see them at a great whale watching area, along with a throng of other whale watchers. It wasn’t too packed with people, which was great, and we could stand on the shoreline and watch as the mothers and their calves played in the water and even came surprisingly close to the shore. Sadly the battery on my camera ran out at this stage as I hadn’t been able to charge it, and I missed taking some excellent
photos of the whales.

On my last day in Puerto Madryn I bought a ticket further north to Bahia Blanca, which wasn’t leaving until later than night. The guy at the reception asked me why I wanted to go to Bahia Blanca, which generally is never a good sign it’s a worth while place to stay. Even online the internet agreed it wasn’t somewhere interesting to stay, even so far as saying there is nothing at all in central Argentina to lure tourists and their valuable dollars.

I figured I’d just decide what to do when I arrived; it was going to be an early morning arrival anyway so I had plenty of time to make up my mind what to do. So after a great lunch of garlic salmon, which I swear was the entire salmon, I made my way to the bus terminal and continued my journey northwards.